BURNING TESTIMONY: Former aide testifies to Mark Meadows’ fiery way of DESTROYING EVIDENCE
Former Senior White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows burned documents on more than one occasion, according to previously unreleased transcripts included in the January 6th House Select Committee’s final report.
Hutchinson told the investigative panel that during Trump’s final two months in the White House, her former boss burned at least a dozen documents in his office.
“She told the committee that she actually saw Chief of Staff Mark Meadows burning documents in his office fireplace around a dozen times,” CNN correspondent Jessica Schneider told host Wolf Blitzer. “Which she says amounted to about once or twice a week between December 2020 and January 2021.”
Watch the video below.
At least two of the occasions occurred after Meadows met with Freedom Caucus Chair, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), Mediaite reported.
Perry — credited with introducing then-President Trump to low-level Department of Justice official, Jeffrey Clark — played an active role in overturning the results of the 2020 election.
Unlike Hutchinson, both Perry and Meadows refused to comply with subpoenas to testify before the committee.
The Justice Department failed to act on Congress’s criminal referral of Meadows to be held in contempt for refusing to appear for the subpoena, but its criminal inquiry led to a warrant and seizure of Rep. Perry’s phone in August.
Though at the time he wasn’t a target of the investigation, much has changed.
The seizure came two months after the FBI executed search warrants from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General on Clark and former Trump attorney John Eastman, two key players in the coup co-conspiracy.
Thousands of Meadow’s text messages were turned over to the Select Committee, revealing exchanges with 34 members of Congress — including Rep. Perry.
In them, the treasonous congressman talked of seizing voting machines and challenging the results in his home state of Pennsylvania.
Perry tried to persuade the Trump-appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Bill McSwain, to investigate the vote, PoliticaPA reported.
“What will it take for Bill Mcswain to open an investigation,” he wrote.
That Meadows burned documents is alarming enough, but what documents he chose to incinerate raises many questions.
On not one, but two of the 12 occasions it was after meeting with a GOP congressman who inserted himself in the forefront of those trying to help Donald Trump remain in power illegally.
Talking Points Memo, which released Meadow’s texts to the public, describes Rep. Perry as a paranoid conspiracy theorist caught up in Trump’s big lie.
At least 62 messages were exchanged between the men between election day and President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“Meadows’ text log shows what the scheme to subvert the 2020 election looked like behind the scenes,” author Scott Walker said on an episode of MSNBC‘s Morning Joe.
“It reveals the roots of the violence and its key enablers in Washington. The messages show the plot began well before Jan. 6 and continued afterward. They are essential documentation of a dark day in American history.”
“The texts between Perry and Meadows show the congressman attempting to involve himself in nearly every aspect of the campaign to block Biden’s win,” Talking Points Memo wrote.
There are questions as to whether the text messages turned over to the committee are incomplete, and the latest transcripts from Hutchinson’s four closed-door depositions add credence to the lingering doubts.
Meadows mentioned moving communications over the encrypted communications app Signal during the exchanges.
While the American people may never know the whole truth, we do know enough about the big lie and who was involved in spreading it.
Hopefully, it’s enough for the DOJ to act.
Watch the video here.
Original reporting by Michael Luciano at Mediaite.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
