GOP Rep. Questions Jan. 6 Committee Chair On Meadows Contempt Of Congress Resolution

mr chairman um i wanted to introduce a letter that was sent to the council for uh by the council from mr meadows to mr thompson chairman thompson and the other members of select committee on december 13th and just to ask unanimous consent into thank you very much mr chairman um did mr meadows write you on october the 6th to request the select committee identify topics which he might be able to provide useful non-privileged information uh i'm certain he did if you're referring to a letter yeah i i'm i'm sure you're right uh did you engage in accommodations process to narrow the scope of the subpoena was that a serious back and forth discussion well we've been back and forth with uh mr meadows council since september uh on various issues uh at no point uh did we refuse to engage in uh did you ever seriously consider was i mean was your subpoena absolute or were you willing to say yeah there are some privileged areas here that perhaps are beyond what we should be well the subpoena spoke for itself uh mr rankin remember what we tried to do uh was to accommodate uh his counsel on any questions uh to the extent uh practicable that's that was what we did okay on november 3rd didn't mr meadows write again stating he was quote willing to explore with the select committee whether outside the confines of the subpoena an accommodation that could be reached by which he might be able to answer under agreed upon appropriate circumstances a limited set of questions that would further a valid legislative purpose within the scope of the select committee well you know the subpoena uh required a deposition and we have as a committee sought to depose him pursuant to that now we can negotiate around some other issues but he has to sit for the deposition and can that deposition be limited in any way before you sit down isn't that the purpose of the negotiation to see okay there's non-privileged matters that certainly and as you suggested and uh your testimony and he clearly thought there were areas that were non-privileged that that were appropriate for the committee to be asking about well if he felt there were areas that would be outside then he could put them forth at that proper time but we felt that he needed to do it at the deposition okay after additional exchanges of letters you wrote to mr meadows on november 9th unilaterally stating that quote it appears the accommodation process has reached its natural conclusion yet mr meadows was still seeking to define the contours and accommodation is that correct that's correct okay what legal standard did you use as the basis for your decision to decide despite ongoing correspondence that the accommodations process was over well the legal standard was the fact that every person that has offered testimony to the committee we've tried to work with them but it's the committee's standards that we are here to not the other individual okay on november 19th that mr meadows sent you a letter to clearly communicating a list of topics on which he was willing to provide responses to written interrogations well uh in all difference to uh mr meadows counsel then you know he can say it but it's left up to us to accept it as a committee mr chairman could i um i'd like to make sure that we enter into the record all of the committee all of the chairman's responses to mr meadows attorney because in addition to what the ranking member is referring to the committee has engaged with mr meadows council multiple times providing with him lists of topics about which we'd like to question him that are clearly non-privileged and if he has a privileged claim he needs to make he needs to appear and assert it on the record but his refusal to appear at the deposition that was scheduled when he requested it be scheduled at the end of multiple exchanges back and forth made his assertion of that privilege on the record impossible and he has has never indicated to us um any justification for his refusal to appear to discuss non-privileged materials and that's because he has no basis for which to refuse to appeal to prepare to discuss those materials without objection okay mr chairman as mr meadows provided you with 1139 documents 6836 total pages uh and a privileged log for any documents withheld he has provided the committee with a number of documents okay did mr meadows also provide 2319 text messages uh and a metadata from his personal cell and 20 documents from his personal computer and a privileged log for any withheld text messages well to the extent that the numbers you quote are correct uh those documents of what we have the question mr rankin member for a lot of us is uh now that we're in receipt of those documents we wanted to talk uh to uh mr meadows about them and that's why we wanted to get him before the committee uh for deposition and he's refused to come on the subpoena in question did the committee issue it for law enforcement purposes or legislative purposes or both uh i would say for legislative purposes okay that's what i assume during our hearing on jeff the jeffrey clark criminal contempt resolution you and your colleagues repeatedly said that clark could not raise executive privilege pursuant to trump versus thompson because clark was not the one in court but mr meadows is in court is that correct that's correct okay and any just well again during the same hearing you and your college repeatedly referred to the need for document production in order to continue your investigation um if that's and i'm sure that is the case but then why are we advancing a a you know measure here that's purely punitive that is the committee's not pursuing civil enforcement of the of the uh subpoena why not the civil courts why the criminal courts well clearly the uh criminal choice is what the committee made we see the lawsuit merely as a delaying tactic on the part of mr meadows and we have given him as i've said earlier every opportunity uh to come to the committee uh we negotiated with him and at the last moment uh he said he's not coming and then he filed suit which is his choice we don't have to as a committee yeah no so again i'm just trying to be clear on this because you clearly had a choice to make and i think when you choose the criminal course you you assure you're not going to get cooperation when you choose a civil choice you might so i'm just trying to understand why not try that first civil contempt as opposed to criminal contempt it was a decision that the committee made to go the criminal route okay thank you very much mr chairman thank you mr chairman are you back thank you uh mr torres

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 12,467

Keywords:

Id: V-iEEr9tvWo

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021