The president of the United States, Joe Biden, affirmed this Wednesday that Mark Meadows, who was Donald Trump’s chief of staff (2017-2021) at the time of the assault on the Capitol, “deserves” to have been declared in contempt by the House Short.
The president thus positioned himself in statements to the press before starting his Kentucky trip to visit the areas most affected by the tornadoes that ravaged that and other states of the United States last Friday.
“It seems to me that he deserves to be found in contempt,” Biden said.
The lower house of the United States, with a Democratic majority, voted on Tuesday in favor of declaring Meadows in contempt and, now, the accusations against him go to the Department of Justice, which must decide whether to convene a grand jury to formally accuse him of contempt by criminal means.
The contempt charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $ 100,000 fine, according to the Congressional Investigative Service.
Meadows was found in contempt after having stopped collaborating with the committee that investigates the assault on the Capitol and that was created by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, with the mission of investigating what happened during the attack, who was responsible and what can be done to avoid another similar event.
That committee has revealed that on the day of the assault, Meadows received text messages from Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., and personalities from the conservative Fox network, who were appalled by the attack on the legislative headquarters.
Specifically, both Don Jr. and three Fox hosts sent text messages to Meadows asking him to persuade Trump to take the attack seriously and ask his followers to leave the Capitol.
“We need a speech in the Oval Office. You have to lead now. This has been too far and out of hand,” Don Jr. said in a message to Meadows.
The text messages are part of a package of 9,000 documents that Meadows gave to the committee before changing his mind and giving up his collaboration.
Meadows decided to stop cooperating on the grounds that his work at the White House should remain secret because Trump had invoked “executive privilege, “ a doctrine that allows the president of the United States to prevent the dissemination of certain materials.
On January 6, some 10,000 people – most of them Trump sympathizers – marched towards the Capitol and about 800 broke into the building to prevent the victory of the new US president, Joe Biden, from being ratified, over the Republican candidate in the elections of November 2020.
Five people died and about 140 officers were attacked.