Mark Meadows, the fourth and final White House chief of staff during Donald Trump’s four-year presidency, has testified before the federal grand jury reviewing evidence in two special-counsel investigations into the former president, the New York Times reported late Tuesday.
ABC News reportedly confirmed the New York Times reporting and quoted an unnamed source as having said Meadows “answered questions on both Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.”
Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed in November by Attorney General Merrick Garland, was tasked with probing Trump on two distinct tracks: the keeping of classified documents at his private membership club and personal residence in Palm Beach, Fla., and the effort to overcome President Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election in the two months that followed, including, notably, on Jan. 6, 2021, when demonstrators loyal to the then-president stormed the U.S. Capitol and disrupted for hours the congressional certification of the Electoral College results.
Neither media outlet appeared to have pinned down precisely when the Meadows testimony occurred.
Meadows, a former Republican member of the U.S. House from North Carolina, reportedly was subpoenaed in February by the special counsel.
Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the bipartisan House committee investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol provided some of the more enduring highlights of that committee’s televised hearings.
From the archives (July 2022): Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s live testimony before Jan. 6 select committee was a TV ratings hit: Nielsen data
That committee ultimately recommended criminal charges against Trump before being disbanded when Republicans won control of the House in November’s midterm elections and elected a Trump-aligned speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy of California.
Trump has at times in recent months asked aides how Meadows, since January 2021 a partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, was doing, the Times reported, citing an unnamed person described as familiar with the situation.
Read on:
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North Carolina state investigators say they’ve completed voter-fraud probe of Trump chief of staff Meadows