Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump's chief of staff at the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is cooperating with the House committee investigating the pro-Trump insurrection, the committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, said Tuesday.
"Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney," Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement. "He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition."
Meadows is the highest-profile member of Trump's inner circle who is known to be cooperating or who the committee has publicly acknowledged is cooperating. Committee members have previously said many people with connections to the events of that day have voluntarily engaged with investigators, but they have not specified who those individuals are or how high up they were in the Trump administration.
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Thompson, in his statement, said the committee "expects all witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to provide all information requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive."
"The committee will continue to assess his degree of compliance with our subpoena after the deposition," Thompson said.
Details of the deal Meadows struck with the committee were not made public. While he has now produced records for the committee and will sit before it, he could still try to claim executive privilege to protect certain pieces of information, making the cooperation fragile.
In a statement, Meadows' lawyer, George Terwilliger III, said Meadows and his team "continue to work with the Select Committee and its staff to see if we can reach an accommodation that does not require Mr. Meadows to waive Executive Privilege or to forfeit the long-standing position that senior White House aides cannot be compelled to testify before Congress."
"We appreciate the Select Committee's openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics," Terwilliger said.
The bipartisan committee is investigating the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob determined to stop the affirmation of Joe Biden's presidential win. The riot left five people dead and injured some 140 members of law enforcement who faced a barrage of sticks, bear spray, flagpoles and other items used as weapons.
Trump -- who told his supporters to "fight like hell" that morning -- has attempted to hinder the committee's work, including in an ongoing court case, by arguing that Congress cannot obtain information about his private White House conversations.
Earlier this month, White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su sent a letter to Terwilliger notifying him that President Joe Biden will not assert executive privilege or immunity over the documents and deposition requested by the committee related to his client.
As Thompson issued his statement on Meadows, federal judges were questioning whether Trump has the power to go to court to keep White House documents secret from the congressional committee. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit expressed skepticism about the role of the courts in settling disputes between a former president and the sitting president over the release of White House records.
Meadows was subpoenaed by the committee at the end of September and has been "engaged" with investigators to negotiate the terms of his deposition and the turning over of documents. The pace of these discussions, however, caused the committee to weigh more aggressive measures against him.
SCHIFF REACTS
On Twitter, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the committee, said Meadows "has a legal and moral obligation to cooperate with our committee."
"I'm glad he has now agreed to appear and has already provided documents," Schiff said. "We will evaluate the extent of his compliance after his testimony. We must reveal the full truth of what led to January 6."
The news on Meadows' cooperation deal comes a day after the select committee announced that it will move to hold Jeffrey Clark, a top official in the Trump Justice Department, in criminal contempt for not complying with its subpoena. A committee vote is expected today.
Clark appeared for a deposition earlier this month but declined to answer questions. The House as a whole could vote to hold him in contempt as soon as this week. It would be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to indict him.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena. The counts could carry up to two years behind bars.
In the committee's September subpoena of Meadows, a former Republican congressman from North Carolina, Thompson cited his efforts to overturn Trump's defeat in the weeks before the insurrection and his pressure on state officials to push false claims of widespread voter fraud.
"You were the president's chief of staff and have critical information regarding many elements of our inquiry," Thompson wrote. "It appears you were with or in the vicinity of President Trump on January 6, had communication with the president and others on January 6 regarding events at the Capitol and are a witness regarding the activities of the day."
A report from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee detailed how Clark championed Trump's efforts to undo the election results and clashed as a result with Justice Department superiors who resisted the pressure, culminating in a dramatic White House meeting at which Trump ruminated about elevating Clark to attorney general. He did not do so after several aides threatened to resign.
Citing a claim of executive privilege from Trump, Meadows' lawyer, Terwilliger, had written to the committee Nov. 10 saying that his client could not "in good conscience" provide testimony out of an "appreciation for our constitutional system and the separation of powers," asserting that doing so would "undermine the office and all who hold it."
That stance was condemned by the leaders of the committee, Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the vice chair, who accused Meadows of defying a lawful subpoena. They said they would consider pursuing contempt charges to enforce it.
Thompson and Cheney called Trump's privilege claims "spurious" and added that many of the matters they wished to discuss with Meadows "are not even conceivably subject to any privilege claim, even if there were one."
Information for this article was contributed by Mariana Alfaro and Jacqueline Alemany of The Washington Post; by Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press; and by Luke Broadwater of The New York Times.