White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was warned of impending violence in association with the certification of Electoral College votes in the 2020 US presidential election, claimed Cassidy Hutchinson, a special assistant in the Trump White House who recently testified before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol.
Hutchinson told the 9-member panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans that Anthony Oranto, assistant director of the US Secret Service Office of Training, informed Meadows that there were concerns of violence surrounding the certification of Electoral College votes led by then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“I just remember Mr. Ornato coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” Hutchinson said. “And Mr. Meadows said: ‘All right. Let’s talk about it.’”
The details of their conversation was not made clear in the testimony, which was included in the Jan. 6 panel’s Friday court filing.
Texts messages from Meadows’ phone were also released by the panel, including one authored by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who told Meadows on Jan. 5 that Pence, as president of Congress, “should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”
“I have pushed for this,” Meadows replied the next morning. “Not sure it is going to happen.”
Meadows has passed over 2,319 relevant text messages to the Jan. 6 panel, but has withheld some 1,000. He has also refused to testify before the House Select Committee, arguing that his position in the White House grants him immunity–a claim that has not served Trump well in court.
The Friday filing also calls into question Meadows’ attempt to block Verizon from complying with the panel’s subpoena for phone records.
“Mr. Meadows participated, as a functionary of the Trump campaign, in activities intended to result in actions by state officials and legislatures to change the certified results of the election,” the committee said, citing a phone call in which Donald Trump tells the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” more votes.
“In addition, Mr. Meadows communicated repeatedly by text with Congressman Scott Perry regarding a plan to replace Department of Justice leadership in the days before Jan. 6,” the panel raised.
As of this article’s publication, former White House strategist Steve Bannon is the sole individual to be brought up on federal charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The US Department of Justice has not acted on the House’s referral to charge Meadows with contempt of Congress. The full House’s vote came as the first time in nearly two centuries that the chamber voted to hold a former member in contempt.