The answer appears to be not exactly, but more like Mark Meadows finds himself caught in a vise. Both ABC News and the New York Times report that Donald Trump’s former chief of staff undercut his boss’ claims of declassifying material found in his residence in Mar-a-Lago.
But did Meadows do so willingly? ABC News doesn’t characterize it, which itself leaves a suggestion that Meadows may be calculating his safest trajectory through multiple Trump indictments:
Appearing to contradict former President Donald Trump’s primary public defense in the classified documents case, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators that he could not recall Trump ever ordering, or even discussing, declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was he aware of any “standing order” from Trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the Oval Office, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
An early draft of Mark Meadows’ memoir also came to the attention of prosecutors, as Meadows turned out to be indiscreet about one of the main allegations that later came from Smith:
ABC News has also reviewed an early draft of the prologue to Meadows’ book, “The Chief’s Chief,” about his time serving as Trump’s chief of staff for the final months of the Trump White House, which includes a description of Trump having a classified war plan “on the couch” at his office in Bedminster, New Jersey, at a meeting attended by Meadows’ ghostwriter and publicist, but not by Meadows himself. The reference to that document being in Trump’s possession was removed before the book was published.
Multiple sources tell ABC News Meadows acknowledged to investigators that he asked that the paragraph be changed, and that it would be “problematic” had Trump had such a document in his possession. Sources tell ABC News that Meadows told special counsel investigators that he did not discuss making those edits with Trump.
Oops. This describes the explicit allegation involving a taped conversation and an admission by Trump that the documents was still classified. Why write that passage in the first place? It clearly would have implicated Trump in a crime, although maybe Meadows initially thought no one would bother following up on it. He certainly changed his mind before publication, however, which shows a recognition of a potential crime, at least in the minds of prosecutors.
Newsweek (and 19FortyFive) wonder whether Meadows flipped on Trump, especially now that Meadows himself has been indicted in Georgia. His absence from the Smith indictment smells funny to Newsweek’s Ewan Palmer, especially considering the memoir change, but former US Attorney Preet Bharara sounds skeptical:
Meadows is one of 19 suspects, including Trump, who has been charged in Georgia under Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling election interference probe.
Meadows wasn’t one of the six co-conspirators accused in Smith’s January 6 indictment of conspiring with Trump to overturn the last election’s results, raising suspicions that Meadows may have flipped and testified against the former president in the federal case. Trump has pleaded not guilty to four charges as part of Smith’s investigation.
Bharara pushed back on the claims that Meadows could have flipped on Trump because he is charged in one election investigation, but not the other.
“We have a situation in which he has been charged in the Georgia case,” Bharara told ABC News.
“And it’s unlikely that you’re charged and defended in one case, but you flipped in a related case. So I don’t know that he’s cooperating.”
Indeed — that wouldn’t make much sense, although Meadows’ indictment in Georgia doesn’t either. Meadows faces two counts in that indictment: the overall RICO count and one count related to “The Call” to Brad Raffensperger. The allegation is that Trump and Meadows pressured the secretary of state to do something illegal to change the outcome of the election. Nothing Smith is investigating at the moment relates to those supposed acts, though, so it really would be two completely separate situations for Meadows.
The NYT report makes it more clear that Meadows has only cooperated reluctantly, and limited to only the barest necessity — so far:
This winter, after receiving a subpoena from a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Mark Meadows commenced a delicate dance with federal prosecutors.
He had no choice but to show up and, eventually, to testify. Yet Mr. Meadows — Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff — initially declined to answer certain questions, sticking to his former boss’s position that they were shielded by executive privilege.
But when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump’s executive privilege claims before a judge, Mr. Meadows pivoted. Even though he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he decided to trust Mr. Smith’s team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with them not only about the steps the former president took to stay in office, but also about his handling of classified documents after he left.
The episode illustrated the wary steps Mr. Meadows took to navigate legal and political peril as prosecutors in Washington and Georgia closed in on Mr. Trump, seeking to avoid being charged himself while also sidestepping the career risks of being seen as cooperating with what his Republican allies had cast as partisan persecution of the former president.
As Wilford Brimley says in Absence of Malice … “Wonderful thing, subpoenas.” The sequence of events seems clearer in the NYT report that Meadows did his best to resist interrogations by investigators, short of taking the Fifth — but Meadows wasn’t implicated in the classified-materials probe, so the Fifth wouldn’t have applied. And if he’d tried it, Smith would likely have granted immunity limited to the classified-materials case to force his testimony anyway.
Where does this leave Trump? Probably twisting in the wind on his claims to have declassified the information at Mar-a-Lago, but he was pretty much doing that already. Presidents cannot just think classified material into unclassified status; they have to take some overt action, and a president’s chief of staff would be a primary witness to such orders. However, the recorded conversation at Bedminster already established that Trump knew the material was classified at the moment it was exposed to non-cleared individuals.
It doesn’t mean Meadows has flipped on Trump. But’s it may be difficult to tell whether Meadows could do any more damage to Trump’s defense on that point by flipping than in just being forced to answer questions truthfully.
