Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is walking back on an earlier agreement made with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol and will no longer cooperate with the probe.
Meadows and his attorney George Terwilliger reportedly alerted the House panel that the former Trump official had changed his mind Tuesday morning.
A letter sent to the committee by Terwilliger and obtained by CNN read: "We now must decline the opportunity to appear voluntarily for a deposition."
According to the Associated Press, Terwilliger wrote that the deposition would be "untenable" because the House panel "has no intention of respecting boundaries" concerning questions that Meadows has claimed executive privilege over.
Former President Donald Trump has invoked executive privilege over thousands of pages of documents from his administration. With a lawsuit pending, it is unclear if Trump will be able to successfully block the January 6 committee from obtaining those communications.
On Tuesday, Meadows' lawyer also made an appearance on Fox News, in which he said that they had tried to reach a deal with the committee over the last few weeks but were unable to come to an agreement.
Meadows is expected to appear on the network later in the evening.
This latest development comes just a week after the January 6 committee had announced Meadows' cooperation.
Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairman, had released a statement on November 30 revealing that, "Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney. He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition."
Meadows had previously failed to show up for the original deposition after being subpoenaed.
The committee had considered referring the former White House chief of staff to the Justice Department for criminal contempt charges, but those plans were altered by the last-minute cooperation efforts from Meadows.
In response to Meadows' abrupt reversal, the committee has threatened to move forward with those charges should the former chief of staff fail to show up for Wednesday's scheduled deposition.
"If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution," committee Chairman Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney said in a Tuesday statement.
The panel had previously approved to hold former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in contempt of Congress for also defying his subpoena, but gave him one last chance to cooperate after Clark told the committee he intends to plead the Fifth Amendment.
Thompson said the committee agreed to allow Clark the opportunity to show up for another deposition so that the former official "can assert that privilege on a question-by-question basis, which is what the law requires of someone who asserts the privilege against self-incrimination."
On Tuesday, Terwilliger slammed Thompson for his response to Clark's letter, telling Fox, "the chairman of the committee... publicly said that another witness' claiming of the Fifth Amendment would be tantamount to an admission of guilt"—and adding that those comments raised concerns of "what is going on with this committee."
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon is also awaiting trial for a misdemeanor criminal contempt charge after he refused to hand over documents to the committee or show up for a deposition, citing executive privilege assertions from Trump.
Newsweek reached out to Terwilliger for comment but did not hear back before publication.
Update 12/7/21 10:53 AM ET: with additional information.
Update 12/7/21 4:17 PM ET: with comments from the January 6 House select committee.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
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