If you read this blog regularly, you will come across certain repetitious themes and opinions. One of them is that Mark Meadows is the linchpin to understanding exactly what happened in the White House before, during and after January 6. Another one is that Mark Meadows is not going to go to prison for Donald Trump.
Meadows is the elephant in the room right now. Everybody knows that he is key. It’s also evident that he can’t stay in the shadows too much longer. Steve Bannon is in the process of having his contempt of congress case fall apart and that’s the template for the same thing to happen to Mark Meadows — although Meadows’ executive privilege claim is less attenuated than Bannon’s, since at least he was employed by the Trump administration at the time.
Meadows cannot stay silent forever. And while he is in seclusion, not saying anything, other forces are at work. And they’re at work against him. Meadows is being set up as Trump’s patsy. Meadows is the fall guy. Rolling Stone:
Trump’s inner circle increasingly views Meadows as a likely fall guy for the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Members of Trump’s legal team are actively planning certain strategies around Meadows’ downfall — including possible criminal charges. Trump has himself begun the process of distancing himself from some of his onetime senior aide’s alleged actions around Jan. 6.
Meadows’ already bleak legal prospects could get even worse. Rolling Stone has learned that the Jan. 6 committee has been quietly probing his financial dealings, and any new revelations would add to an already long list of unethical and potential illegal actions he’s accused of taking on behalf of Donald Trump.
“Everyone is strategizing around the likelihood that Mark is in a lot of trouble,” says a lawyer close to the former president. “Everyone who knows what they’re doing, anyway.”
That’s an important distinction to make in Trump world, between the people who know and the know nothings, who are in the majority. And don’t forget, if Meadows has drawn the short straw as fall guy, he’s earned it. The man is hated. COVID spread through the White House on his watch. He didn’t possess enough leadership ability to implement simple safeguards that even the humblest office manager in corporate America was doing with ease. Meadows is credited with putting peoples’ lives in danger. So he’s going to have few friends rush to his aid when the ax falls and it is being sharpened as we speak.
And the former president himself is not long on loyalty, particularly when facing legal peril of his own. Trump’s team has already explored possible legal gameplans about what would happen if Meadows faced additional criminal charges stemming from the events surrounding Jan. 6, according to three people familiar with the situation. And those discussions have at times focused on how to insulate Trump, should any significant charges against foot soldiers like Meadows actually materialize.
Indeed, in recent weeks, Trump himself has casually dropped into conversations with some of his longtime associates that he didn’t always know what Meadows was doing during the months leading up to the riot or after his time in office, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. (When Trump finds himself backed into a corner or a moment of legal jeopardy, he will often claim — however flimsily — that he barely knew a top aide who was doing his bidding, or that he didn’t know what his own personal lawyers were doing for him.) […]
“Mark is gonna get pulverized…and it’s really sad,” predicts one of Trump’s current legal advisers. “Based on talking to [Meadows in the past, it felt like] he doesn’t actually believe any of this [election-theft] stuff, or at least not most of it. He was obviously just trying to perform for Trump, and now he’s maybe screwed himself completely.”
Reportedly Meadows was talking to an inebriated Rudy Giuliani on election night when Giuliani hatched the scheme — or voiced the scheme that Bannon had already hatched, take your pick — that Trump should simply announce himself the winner of the election. Meadows said, according to the Washington Post, “That’s irresponsible.” He wasn’t on board for the Big Lie right that moment but he evidently decided to go along with it. That was his fatal error.
But he wanted to stay in power. Alyssa Farrah, one of the communication aides, was on CNN yesterday and she said that when she went to resign Meadows said to her, “Maybe we’re not leaving.” So he bought into the possibility of the Big Lie succeeding. That right there shows what a moral amoeba he is.
But Trumpland’s concerted efforts to distance the former president and other protected persons from Meadows comes amid a broader search for someone to take the fall. Cheney’s list of patsies on Tuesday included Trumpist lawyer and “coup memo” author John Eastman — whom, as Rolling Stone reporting in June, Trump’s team has been eyeing — and Sydney Powell, another Trump lawyer. Cheney also named Rep. Scott Perry, who allegedly was part of the push to get the Justice Department to overturn the election.
There is no joy in Trump world and there hasn’t been for some time. Trump struck out but wasn’t man enough to pick up his ball and go play another game. No, he had to burn down the stadium. Now the cops are after the arsonists and it will be interesting to see who actually goes to jail. And again I say, it won’t be Mark Meadows. My theory has always been that when pushed to the wall, Meadows will cave and rat Trump and the rest of them out. Let’s see what happens.
Meadows was in on so many things that this isn’t a surprise.
He should be grilled by the committee, but I doubt he can either be truthful or not take the Fifth on everything.
May not matter…the little people under him may well tell J6 and DOJ all that he could have.
Sounds like he ought to review his strategy about going before the committee if only to save his own ass.
Meadows has already proven he’s a few fries short of a happy meal. He took the job as CofS after TFG had already fired Priebus, Kelly and Mulvaney. There was plenty of evidence this was not a good career move. Fortunately for Meadows, there’s plenty of evidence unearthed by the J6 cmte that the Orange Menace had his fingers in every single plot to stay in power. Donito Trumpolini can try and paint Meadows as the brains behind the insurrection, but no one outside his cult will buy it.
From Chief of Staff to “Coffee Boy” in 5 – 4- 3- 2 – 1… Well, he might at least get a designation of “Chief” Coffee Boy, at least from everyone but Trump!
I fear the problem of counting on Meadows to be able to deliver the coup de grace is that he’s just some average dude that lucked his way upwards in life to a seat in Congress and then into Trump’s orbit. He’s nothing but a malleable piece of Play-Do with about as much intelligence and he doesn’t strike me as someone who’d have sense enough to, even if he realized some serious shit was going down would have enough sense to cover his own ass and gather up some proverbial receipts.
Frankly, as a resident of NC I know that the U.S. Attorney has him cold on voter fraud – that go-to-hell ramshackle trailer he and his wife bought in the middle of nowhere, a place HE never (as far as anyone around there can say and they’ve been asked) visited much less lived in happens to be the address he used to register to vote. And he voted using that fraudulent address! Pretty simple case. Oh, he could mount a defense and in NC (especially that part) he might get a hung jury but there’s more than a small chance he’d get convicted. So, for the life of me I can’t understand why he hasn’t been charged. Having that hanging over his head would I think have done wonders (and long ago) to get him talking to investigators. Maybe DOJ has thought it would be better to wait on the J6 Committee to do what it could. But maybe having an actual felony conviction staring him in the face would have him singing like a bird to both DOJ and the J6 Committee.
I don’t get it. But I can see how Team Trump would want to make Meadows their fall guy. Perhaps he had a sense of it even before January 6 and as it all went so terribly and awfully bad that day his mental state as described by Ms. Hutchinson makes sense. He knew he was fucked. He could either become the key witness in all the investigating to follow or go down, and that while he hadn’t been bothering to make sure his own ass was covered the crazies he’d been dealing with were true Trumpkins who’d been taking measures every step of the way to deflect blame. And that HE as Chief of Staff would wind up holding the flaming bag of shit.
If meadows were a black Democrat, he’d be sitting in wake county jail for obvious voter fraud, made even worse with him running around shooting his mouth off about voter fraud. I called the state attorney General to let him know that IF no charges are forthcoming, then fuck you pal. You’ve successfully turned me into an outlaw with NO respect for the cult know as the LAW. For any so called reason to respect it, there are 50 to give your cult the middle finger.
They’re all going down…every…last…one of them. Meadows may go before them but he won’t be the last. Five bucks says that all those little people Trump World used and abused has given law enforcement all it needs to nail them.
It’s amazing how scrappy and effective the small people can become when their best efforts at some level of their profession, their salaries remain unpaid, but the bill collectors come knocking on the door, with the bad news that Trump NEVER pays anybody, unless the Courts force him too …
Good luck, Everyone in Trump land are heading to hell in a hand basket …
We already know the names of some of the loudest fools out there, who have left their marks in many functions of Congress … After the dust settles, I can see busses lined up to haul a major portion of the GOP to a long vacation in an exclusive Hotel …
It IS a wonderful vision indeed …
I had wondered ever since Jan 6, who would go down for this traitorous fiasco. But my attitude was sealed when Bannon reversed himself about testifying, which was a deal sealer they think they can get away with. But this ain’t Watergate or Iran/Contra or even the Iraq/WMD debacle. IF they donlt all go down, we are doomed.