Mark Meadows, a longtime associate of Donald Trump who was chief of staff in the Trump White House in its closing months, has reportedly provided testimony before a grand jury amid the criminal investigations connected to Donald and led by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Meadows’s reported testimony follows multiple past rulings denying a push to use executive privilege to block his cooperation with federal teams.
Meadows reportedly answered questions about both the classified documents found with Trump and the efforts after the last presidential election to keep Donald in power.
Meadows was a supporter of the then-president’s ambitions to stay in office after the 2020 presidential election despite his documented loss to Joe Biden. In the docs case, his close proximity to Trump in the White House chain of command could allow him to provide critical insights about how Donald was handling documents while in office. Trump himself has since outright asserted in a town hall on CNN that he took documents, though he has resisted acknowledging the protected status of those files — at least publicly. In a recording that was reportedly obtained by prosecutors, Trump can allegedly be heard discussing a claimed document he was harboring related to military official Mark Milley and Iran, acknowledging the protected status for the doc, though Trump has since claimed he didn’t know anything about the meeting where the recently revealed recording was made.
Individuals working on an autobiography for Meadows were reportedly present at the meeting where Trump made those remarks allegedly captured. Investigators have taken an interest, as a subpoena was recently reported that sought documents held by Trump’s team and related to Mark Milley or Iran. The former president’s team allegedly couldn’t find a copy of the document that Trump could be heard discussing on that tape, although the multiple past transfers and seizures of documents Trump was harboring — most notably seen during the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago late last year — mean that it’s technically possible the government obtained it already. Trump’s public commentary clearly suggests he is expecting charges in at least the documents investigation, as he keeps posting screeds.
