Attorney says Meadows won’t cooperate with Jan. 6 panel

By ERIC TUCKER and MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an abrupt reversal, an lawyer for erstwhile White House main of unit Mark Meadows said his lawsuit volition not cooperate with a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, citing a breakdown successful negotiations with the panel.

Attorney George Terwilliger said successful a missive Tuesday that a deposition would beryllium “untenable” due to the fact that the Jan. 6 sheet “has nary volition of respecting boundaries” concerning questions that erstwhile President Donald Trump has claimed are off-limits due to the fact that of enforcement privilege. Terwilliger besides said that helium learned implicit the play that the committee had issued a subpoena to a third-party communications supplier that helium said would see “intensely personal” information.

Terwilliger said successful a connection past week that helium was continuing to enactment with the committee and its unit connected a imaginable accommodation that would not necessitate Meadows to waive the enforcement privileges claimed by Trump oregon “forfeit the long-standing presumption that elder White House aides cannot beryllium compelled to testify” earlier Congress.

“We admit the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses connected non-privileged topics,” helium said then.

A spokesperson for the sheet did not person contiguous remark connected Terwilliger’s letter. The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said past week that Meadows had been engaging with the sheet done his attorney, producing records and agreeing to look for an archetypal deposition.

Thompson said the committee would “continue to measure his grade of compliance with our subpoena aft the deposition.” He has said that immoderate witnesses who don’t comply volition beryllium held successful contempt of Congress.

In halting cooperation, Terwilliger besides cited comments from Thompson that helium said unfairly formed aspersions connected witnesses who invoke their Fifth Amendment close against self-incrimination. A abstracted witness, erstwhile Justice Department authoritative Jeffrey Clark, has said helium volition invoke those Fifth Amendment rights.

“As a effect of cautious and deliberate information of these factors, we present indispensable diminution the accidental to look voluntarily for a deposition,” Terwilliger wrote successful the letter.

The reversal comes arsenic Meadows has been receiving attraction for a caller book, released Tuesday, which revealed that Trump received a affirmative COVID-19 trial earlier a statesmanlike statement and was acold sicker than the White House revealed astatine the time.

Trump — who told his supporters to “fight similar hell” earlier hundreds of his supporters broke into the Capitol and stopped the statesmanlike electoral number — has attempted to hinder overmuch of the committee’s work, including successful an ongoing tribunal case, by arguing that Congress cannot get accusation astir his backstage White House conversations.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.