Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, was subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith, a federal prosecutor charged with investigating the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Meadows received the legal summons in late January, a source familiar with the situation told CNN, which was the first to report on the subpoena Wednesday night. An attorney for Meadows declined to comment to the outlet.
On January 2, 2021, just days before the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Meadows was involved in the telephone call when Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to reverse the presidential election results in that state. Meadows was in and out of the Oval Office on January 6, 2021, and saw Trump’s reaction as rioters stormed the Capitol.
Meadows previously cited executive privilege in an effort to fight a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia appointed to investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. A judge threw out his challenge last fall, finding that Meadows was “material and necessary to the investigation.”
The demand for Meadows’s testimony in the federal probe was made before Smith issued a separate subpoena to former vice president Mike Pence, calling for him to speak with federal prosecutors as well. Although Pence initially appeared to be cooperating with federal authorities, he now appears to be preparing to challenge the subpoena to avoid alienating Republican voters.
Reports say that Pence’s novel legal challenge will be based on a constitutional provision known as the “speech or debate” clause. The former vice president will argue that the clause would shield him from having to testify based on his former duties as president of the Senate, reports say.
“He [Pence] thinks that the ‘speech or debate’ clause is a core protection for Article I, for the legislature,” an anonymous source familiar with the matter told Politico. “He feels it really goes to the heart of some separation of powers issues. He feels duty-bound to maintain that protection, even if it means litigating it.”
That legal maneuvering could be “the first time it’s ever been clearly expressed that the vice president is claiming his own constitutional privilege,” a former aide of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) told Politico.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November.