The lawyer for former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Friday that ex-aide will not comply with a subpoena from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack in order to protect presidents’ executive privilege, and that the matter should be resolved by the courts before any action is taken.
“Our correspondence over the last few weeks shows a sharp legal dispute with the committee. The issues concern whether Mr. Meadows can be compelled to testify and whether, even if he could , that he could be forced to answer questions that involve privileged communications,” Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger said in a statement. “Legal disputes are appropriately resolved by courts. It would be irresponsible for Mr. Meadows to prematurely resolve that dispute by voluntarily waiving privileges that are at the heart of those legal issues.”
Terwilliger added: “No matter how important the subject matter of the committee’s work, decades of litigation over Executive Privilege shows how critically important it is for a president to have access to advice and counsel without fear that political opponents in Congress will later be able to pull away the shield of confidentiality that protects candor in those communications.”
