Mark Meadows Should Be Hauled in Front of Congress to Testify on National Television
More and more, it looks like Mark Meadows was the Forrest Gump of the Trump camp's sprawling and extended campaign to steal the 2020 election. This makes some sense. Meadows first made his name as the right-winger's right-winger as a congressman from Georgia, co-founding the "Freedom Caucus" on the basis that Paul Ryan—a man who dreamed aloud of cutting Medicaid at college keggers—was too squishy on government spending, or whatever. Basically, the Freedom club was reserved for the House Republican contingent's biggest assholes. (Will the admissions process be part of the festivities in Tokyo?) But once Meadows jumped ship to serve as Donald Trump's fourth and final chief of staff—only to be replaced in his congressional seat by Madison Cawthorn, God help us all—he became more than a belligerent legislative vandal. He became party to an unprecedented assault on the basic foundations of American democracy that continues to this day.
A new report from the New York Times over the weekend, based on revelations from an investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee, detailed new ways in which Meadows had a front-row seat to some scattershot ratfucking. Meadows pushed the Department of Justice across five emails to investigate loony conspiracy theories—always put your delusional election-theft scams in writing!—including a plea for then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to look into whether people in Italy somehow used satellites to steal votes from Mr. Trump. This was, and we're not kidding here, referred to as "Italygate." Truly the dumbest time to be alive. And that was just one of the theories of how Trump really won. Another involved New Mexico, a state Joe Biden won by nearly 11 percent. As usual with the tail end of the Trump Era, the ratfuckers were not sending their best. Most of the hacks with genuine talent realized the story always ends with someone not named Donald Trump under the wheels of the bus.
But this fucking unbelievable tampering with the rule of law—remember when Bill Clinton's meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was the apocalypse?—was just Meadows' latest appearance in this great American screenplay. Here's a (possibly non-exhaustive) list:
Meadows joined the call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the sitting president begged the Raff to "find" the exact number of votes for him to change the outcome of the election in that state.
Meadows went down to Cobb County, Georgia in December to monitor an audit there.
On January 1, Meadows wrote to Justice asking for an investigation into a bogus theory around signature-matching in Georgia.
The Times also pointed out that Trump summoned Rosen to the White House on December 15—one day after making him acting attorney general—to push him to use the Justice Department to overturn the election results. Trump wanted a special counsel to investigate Dominion Voting Systems! The Trump White House wanted Rosen to broker a meeting between an ex-CIA agent-turned-YouTuber and the FBI regarding the Italygate nonsense! When Rosen failed to do his bidding, Trump looked at replacing him with a more pliable acting attorney general! Meanwhile, Trump was also meddling with the Pentagon, purging the leadership of the national security apparatus at a time where he was attempting to overturn the election result and stay in power. Sounds bad, considering the campaign to subvert the results ended with a mob storming the Capitol to prevent their certification, which doubled as confirmation Trump would soon leave power, and the response from the security apparatus in the nation's capital has come under some scrutiny.
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Speaking of which, was Mark Meadows with then-President Trump throughout the day on January 6? If so, he could testify as to what Trump was doing while the mob of people waving Trump flags violently assaulted police officers before breaking into the Capitol. What was Trump doing, apart from calling senators telling them to keep delaying the certification while his mob of street goons battered the doors, as this whole thing unfolded on TV? Meadows should be forced to tell this country what he knows. He should be subpoenaed by Congress to testify on national television about his role in every stage of the campaign to steal the election. If he claims he cannot talk out of some deference to "executive privilege," he should be placed in contempt. There is no rationale for keeping this stuff secret. It is not in the national interest. It's in Trump's interest, which overtook the national interest as a priority of the Executive Branch around 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2017. Make Meadows testify. Demand the truth and impose consequences, or this will happen again. It's already happening.
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