WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, the previous White Home chief of workers underneath President Donald J. Trump, on Tuesday knowledgeable the committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol that he was now not prepared to cooperate with its investigation, reversing a deal he reached with the panel simply final week to take a seat for an interview and supply paperwork.
“We now should decline the chance to look voluntarily for a deposition,” Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, wrote to the committee.
As an alternative, he proposed that Mr. Meadows reply questions in writing by way of what he referred to as an “orderly course of” that might create a “clear file of questions and associated assertions of privilege.”
The turnabout was the second in two weeks by Mr. Meadows, who had initially refused to adjust to a subpoena from Home panel in step with a directive from Mr. Trump, however informed the panel final week that he could be prepared to supply paperwork and sit for a voluntary interview.
In his Tuesday letter, obtained by The New York Occasions, Mr. Meadows’s lawyer made a litany of complaints in opposition to the choose committee, saying that it didn’t seem to respect Mr. Trump’s assertion of government privilege and had issued a wide-ranging subpoena for Mr. Meadows’s communications that would come with private conversations.
“We agreed to supply hundreds of pages of responsive paperwork and Mr. Meadows was prepared to look voluntarily, not underneath compulsion of the choose committee’s subpoena to him, for a deposition to reply questions on non-privileged issues,” Mr. Terwilliger wrote. “Now actions by the choose committee have made such an look untenable.”
Mr. Terwilliger stated the fabric sought by the committee consists of “intensely private communications” with no relevance to any official investigation.
“With the breadth of its subpoenas and its pugnacious method, the choose committee has made clear that it doesn’t intend to respect these necessary constitutional limits,” Mr. Terwilliger wrote.
Consultant Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, referred to as Mr. Meadows’s calls for “imperious and highhanded.”
“I can’t think about we’ll settle for it,” stated Mr. Raskin, including that he was talking just for himself and never the total committee, which has but to debate Mr. Meadows’s newest transfer. “We’ve obtained to resolve what to do. Our witnesses don’t dictate the phrases of our investigation.”
The committee has now interviewed greater than 275 witnesses and is receiving cooperation from some members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s interior circle, together with his former chief of workers Marc Quick, in line with an individual accustomed to the investigation.
