Meadows Claims “Leaked” Texts from Fox Hosts Are Being “Weaponized” by House Committee

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows claimed that “leaked” texts from Fox News hosts who urged him to tell former President Donald Trump to order his supporters to stand down during the storming of the United States are currently being “weaponized” by the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the attack.

“We’ve tried very hard, in a very transparent and accommodating way, to share nonprivileged information,” Meadows said in an interview with Newsmax. “And what we found out tonight is that not only did that just get disregarded, but then they tried to weaponize text messages, selectively leaked them, to put out a narrative, quite frankly, that the president didn’t act.”

None of the Fox hosts who sent Meadows text messages–Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Sean Hannity–have acknowledged the messages on their programs.

Ingraham, for instance, told Meadows that the “president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

Kilmeade, for his part, told Meadows that the attack was “destroying everything you have accomplished.”

The House Select Committee has recommended that Meadows be charged with contempt of Congress after he refused to cooperate with the investigation.

Last week, news outlets reported that Meadows had decided not to sit for a deposition, a reversal from an announcement the week prior that he would comply with the committee’s subpoena ordering him to appear.

“We agreed to provide thousands of pages of responsive documents and Mr. Meadows was willing to appear voluntarily, not under compulsion of the Select Committee’s subpoena to him, for a deposition to answer questions about non-privileged matters. Now actions by the Select Committee have made such an appearance untenable,” George J. Terwilliger III, an attorney for Meadows, wrote in the letter obtained by CNN.

“In short, we now have every indication from the information supplied to us last Friday – upon which Mr. Meadows could expect to be questioned – that the Select Committee has no intention of respecting boundaries concerning Executive Privilege,” he added, noting that Meadows is still willing to answer written questions.

“Nonetheless, as we have before, we reiterate our willingness to consider an interrogatory process of Select Committee written questions and answers from Mr. Meadows so that there might be both an orderly process and a clear record of questions and related assertions of privilege where appropriate,” Terwilliger wrote.

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.