According to ABC News, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony in Jack Smith's case against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C..
Meadows has been interviewed by Jack Smith three times and testified to the Grand Jury after being granted immunity. In those interviews, he told Jack Smith he repeatedly told Trump the accusations about election fraud were baseless. He also said Trump's claim that he won the election on November 3, 2020 was false. Which yes, because all of the votes had not been counted when he made that declaration. It was purely made on Bannon's advice that he go out there and declare victory ahead of Biden, even if the vote wasn't going his way.
According to ABC News' report, Smith's investigators wanted to question Meadows "about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office -- a book that promised to "correct the record" on Trump."
It turns out some of the claims in Meadows' book are false.
According to Meadows' book, the election was "stolen" and "rigged" with help from "allies in the liberal media," who ignored "actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze."
But, as described to ABC News, Meadows privately told Smith's investigators that -- to this day -- he has yet to see any evidence of fraud that would have kept now-president Joe Biden from the White House, and he told them he agrees with a government assessment at the time that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in U.S. history.
It's worth looking at Cassidy Hutchinson's book at this point, because she paints a very grim picture of Mark Meadows in the days and weeks after the election. He distanced himself from her, she caught him burning papers in the fireplace on more than one occasion, and then in the end, he ghosted her. She hasn't spoken to him since the day they left the White House for good.
So it's hard for me to put together what Meadows is telling Jack Smith with his behavior ahead of January 6 and definitely afterwards. I think I want to see more of what he said before I imagine him to be some kind of happy warrior telling Trump what he needed to know instead of what he wanted to hear.
Legal expert Tim Casey, who served on the January 6 committee staff, explained to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace why Mark Meadows received immunity instead of a plea deal.
"He initially asserted a Fifth Amendment privilege, validly, because he does have criminal exposure," he said. "He's part of this conspiracy."
He continued, "But then he was immunized, and he had nowhere else to turn. He couldn't blow us off like he did with the committee. He couldn't assert any more privilege."
"He finally had to tell the truth," he added.
Casey went on to remind viewers that Meadows' testimony doesn't change the core narrative of the January 6 hearings. "It only makes the case stronger," he said.
"All of this, all of these pleas in Georgia and the immunity in Washington, just you have a sense of the wall starting to close in finally, finally, closer and closer to accountability," he told Wallace.
I sure hope so.
Read the whole article here.
