In May, as Republicans set out to hold the country hostage through the debt limit, they turned to the one man they knew was highly skilled at breaking things: Donald Trump’s former chief of staff and founding member of the Freedom Caucus, Mark Meadows. But even as Meadows was showing off the skills that had helped bring down former Republican speaker John Bohener and made him a go-to resource for incoming Republicans who wanted to undercut Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s leadership bid, there was a different brand of chaos swirling around the hard-right stalwart.
Meadows’ involvement in Trump’s plans to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his role in the events that took place around the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 became a central part of House investigations. That included Rep. Liz Cheney reading selections from Meadows’ text feed from that day as Republican congressmen begged him to get Trump to take action to halt the insurgents.
Meadows may have had 2,319 text messages related to Jan. 6, but now there seems to be only one question anyone wants to ask: Has he flipped on Donald Trump?
Just one month after Jack Smith was named special counsel to investigate Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, there were already rumors circulating that Meadows had “flipped on Trump.” That included a former Defense Department attorney who stated his belief that Meadows was willing to testify against Trump to avoid facing charges of his own.
What appeared to make Meadows particularly vulnerable to prosecution—and a prime target for anyone in Smith’s investigation looking to make a deal with an insider—was testimony that had been provided by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. According to Hutchinson, she had been contacted by Meadows’ spokesperson ahead of her testimony to the Jan. 6 committee with a not-so-subtle statement.
Hutchinson: “He said something to the effect of, ‘Well, Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.'”
This testimony left Meadows facing a potential charge of witness tampering, and Hutchinson was far from the only person who reportedly got a tap from Meadows before their testimony. The obvious illegality was enough to make people begin speculating if Meadows would offer up his testimony against Trump to avoid the up to 20-year sentence that comes with each conviction on a charge of tampering with a federal witness.
In January, Meadows was subpoenaed to appear before Smith’s Washington, D.C., grand jury. A month later Meadows, who had been an active figure in social media, abruptly stopped posting, tweeting, or recommending material. He sank into the background.
According to CNN, Meadows was just stepping “out of the spotlight” but continued to “wield political power,” as in that May appearance to give some tips on how to break the nation’s credit rating by making impossible demands to raise the debt limit. And it’s not like he’s hurting for cash. Meadows is cozily nestled in the network of conservative think-tanks and “institutes,” with just one—the Conservative Partnership Institute—paying him over $500,000 to share his genius for causing havoc.
Still, the rumors around Meadows have persisted. Those rumors went into high gear in June, when The New York Times reported that Meadows had testified before the grand jury.
For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled by and wary about the low profile kept by Mr. Meadows in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going into the grand jury or to be interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows has kept largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a significant witness in the inquiries.
On the same day that news came out, journalist Andrew Feinberg reported that Meadows had made a deal to testify against Trump. Other reports that came out that day all seemed to be based on Feinberg’s report, which was not confirmed by any other source. Later that day, Meadow’s attorney strongly denied that Meadows had flipped.
Still, as CNN noted, Trump’s team had reason to be worried.
A source close to Trump’s legal team told CNN earlier in May that Trump’s lawyers had had no contact with Meadows and his team and were in the dark on what Meadows is doing in the investigation. Meadows’ silence has irked lawyers representing other defendants aligned with Trump who have been more open, several sources familiar with the Trump-aligned legal teams said at the time. In particular, they pointed to a $900,000 payment Trump’s Save America political action committee paid to the firm representing Meadows, McGuireWoods, at the end of last year.
Meadows is still “quietly” involved in Republican political actions. He’s still taking home a fat paycheck. However, he’s also gone quiet on social media, fallen out of contact with Trump, and is apparently not talking to others connected with the investigation into Trump’s efforts at overturning the 2020 election.
He’s making a lot of Trump’s inner circle sweat.
But has Meadows flipped on Trump? We don’t know. However, there is one small signal that Meadows isn’t following the script, and it comes back to one of the infamous conversations Trump had over classified documents at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
During one of those conversations, the ghost writer behind Meadows’ memoirs was present. In fact, that writer is one of the possible sources for the audio recording that has since become public, and which provides the clearest, simplest, step-by-step information necessary to convict Trump on mishandling confidential national defense information.
And now, publications that have read Meadows’ memoirs indicated that the actual book contradicts Trump’s claims that he had no secret documents at Bedminster. It describes the incident in which Trump showed off plans for attacking Iran, with the text verifying that Trump did show classified documents. It leaves no doubt that when Trump says there was no document, Trump is lying.
At the very least, this shows that Meadows is willing to put his name on information that he has to know will be damaging to Trump. But whether he’s really ready to pitch Trump completely under the bus remains unknown.
Still, the whole point of Mark Meadows is he likes to break things. Which would seem to make him a bad person to count on in a crunch.
