The House of Representatives voted largely along party lines Tuesday to hold former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt after he refused to sit for a deposition with the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.
Just two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — joined all 221 Democrats in recommending that the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Meadows, a onetime GOP House member from North Carolina who became Donald Trump’s fourth and final White House chief of staff.
The nine-member select committee voted unanimously Monday night to refer its 51-page contempt report against Meadows to the full House, and the panel’s members led Tuesday’s debate in the House Rules Committee and on the chamber floor.
“I have no great desire to be here seeking consideration of this contempt referral. Mr. Meadows was a colleague for more than seven years,” the select committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, told the Rules Committee. “But that doesn’t excuse his behavior.”
“If anything,” Thompson added, “his time as a member of the House should make him more aware of the potential consequences of defying a congressional subpoena. We have given Mr. Meadows every opportunity to cooperate with our investigation. We have been more than fair.”
Another select committee member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), said on the House floor that “if anyone we have called as a witness knows in his bones that he must testify before this committee, it is Mr. Meadows himself.”