Mark Meadows's Text Messages: Communications Revealing Coordination on January 6 and His Refusal to Cooperate with the Congressional Investigation
Tier 3Resolved2020-11-03 to 2022-06-03
Factual Summary
Mark Meadows served as White House Chief of Staff during the final year of the Trump presidency. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol obtained 2,319 text messages from Meadows's personal phone, spanning the period from Election Day 2020 through January 6, 2021, and beyond. These messages revealed extensive communications between Meadows and Fox News hosts, Republican lawmakers, Trump family members, and political operatives regarding the effort to overturn the 2020 election results and the events of January 6.
During the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, multiple individuals texted Meadows urgently requesting that he get President Trump to intervene. Donald Trump Jr. texted: "He's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough." In a follow-up message, Trump Jr. wrote: "We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand."
Fox News hosts sent similar messages during the violence. Laura Ingraham texted: "Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy." Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends wrote: "Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished." Sean Hannity urged: "Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol."
The texts also revealed that in the weeks before January 6, Meadows was in contact with activists promoting conspiracy theories about the election, with Republican lawmakers strategizing about how to challenge the certification of electoral votes, and with rally organizers planning the January 6 event. Representative Jim Jordan's office confirmed that Jordan was among the lawmakers whose texts to Meadows were released by the committee.
Meadows initially cooperated with the select committee, providing thousands of pages of documents including the text messages. However, on the eve of a scheduled December 8, 2021 deposition, Meadows informed the committee that he would no longer cooperate, citing executive privilege and testimonial immunity.
On December 14, 2021, the House voted 222 to 208 to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee's subpoena. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both Republicans, voted with Democrats. The contempt referral was sent to the Department of Justice.
On June 3, 2022, the Department of Justice informed the select committee that it had declined to prosecute Meadows on the contempt charges. The DOJ also declined to prosecute former White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, who had similarly refused to testify. The department did not publicly explain its reasoning in detail, though the decision was understood to reflect the complexity of executive privilege claims by former senior White House officials.
Primary Sources
1. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, public hearing presentations, December 2021
2. H. Rept. 117-216: "Resolution Recommending That the House of Representatives Find Mark Randall Meadows in Contempt of Congress," December 2021
3. Mark Meadows text messages, as entered into the congressional record and reported by CNN, NPR, NBC News, and the Washington Post
Corroborating Sources
1. CNN Exclusive: "Mark Meadows' 2,319 text messages reveal Trump's inner circle communications before and after January 6," April 25, 2022
2. NPR: "Rep. Liz Cheney read text messages she said Mark Meadows got during the Jan. 6 siege," December 13, 2021
3. NBC News: "Fox News hosts, Donald Trump Jr. asked Meadows to get Trump to call off rioters," December 2021
4. Washington Post: "How thousands of text messages from Mark Meadows and others reveal new details about events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack," 2022
5. NPR: "The House votes to hold Mark Meadows in contempt, sending a criminal referral to DOJ," December 14, 2021
Counterarguments and Context
Meadows's attorney argued that the contempt referral was "contrary to law" because Meadows was making "a good-faith invocation of executive privilege and testimonial immunity." The attorney contended that the committee was seeking testimony about communications with the president that were protected by executive privilege, and that a former chief of staff should not be compelled to testify about such matters. Supporters of Meadows's position argued that the DOJ's decision not to prosecute vindicated his legal stance. Some Republican lawmakers characterized the January 6 committee as a partisan body whose subpoenas were politically motivated. Regarding the text messages themselves, the individuals who sent messages urging Trump to intervene on January 6 have argued that their messages demonstrate they were trying to stop the violence, not facilitate it. Fox News hosts who sent urgent texts to Meadows objected to the committee releasing their private communications. However, the text messages are primary documents that speak for themselves. They show that Trump's closest advisors and allies recognized in real time that the president had the ability to stop the violence and was not doing so, and that multiple individuals within Trump's inner circle understood the severity of the situation and the president's inaction.
Author's Note
This entry is classified as Tier 3 because the text messages are primary documentary evidence that was authenticated through the congressional investigation and confirmed by multiple recipients. The texts were initially provided to the committee by Meadows himself before he withdrew cooperation. The DOJ's decision not to prosecute the contempt referral does not diminish the evidentiary value of the messages, which were entered into the public record through congressional proceedings.