Judge rankled by Jan. 6 committee push for executive privilege ruling in Meadows

But the House elected not to raise the issue at all in response to Meadows’ lawsuit, Nichols noted.

“Here we are in the exact same procedural posture as cases in which the privilege has been asserted down the hall, so to speak,” Nichols complained.

Nichols, a Trump appointee, is set to rule on one of the most significant legal battles the select committee has fought. Meadows sued last year to block the committee from forcing him to testify about his intimate knowledge of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as Trump’s intentions on Jan. 6, 2021, when he pressed allies, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, to help block the certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

The select committee has unfurled large swaths of its evidence in recent months, underscoring the crucial information that only Meadows can provide — showing that he was present for some of the most explosive episodes in Trump’s bid to seize a second term he did not win.

Letter described Meadows as one of a dwindling group of high-level Trump White House officials who have yet to fully cooperate. Cabinet secretaries and even Trump’s White House counsel had testified, he noted. But they don’t possess the detailed knowledge of the final, fateful weeks of the Trump presidency that Meadows can describe.

“The chief of staff should do what so many other members of the Trump administration have done. They have come forward. You have seen the numbers. We have Cabinet secretaries. We have the White House counsel,” Letter said.

Meadows has contended that the effort by the committee to demand his testimony at all is barred by the principle of “absolute immunity” for senior White House aides to compelled congressional testimony, a principle the Justice Department has backed for current and former aides to sitting presidents.

But DOJ has long been silent on matters pertaining to former aides to former presidents, and the select committee has argued Meadows can’t categorically refuse to respond to the subpoena. The House held Meadows in contempt in December, but the Justice Department declined to take the case earlier this year. Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger Jr., said he has yet to learn the rationale behind DOJ’s declination.

The hearing featured only a glancing mention of the recent court-authorized search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Terwilliger acknowledged recent news stories that Meadows had turned over a new batch of documents to the National Archives but insisted it had no connection to the Mar-a-Lago developments. Rather, he said, long-running talks with the Archives resulted in a dispute over whether some documents in Meadows’ possession were “presidential records” that belonged to the archives or personal records Meadows was free to keep. In the end, Terwilliger said, Meadows deferred to the Archives to avoid litigation.

The unusual and complicated case has also drawn the direct involvement of the Justice Department, which responded to an offer from Nichols to weigh in on the matter. In court papers over the summer, DOJ articulated a new position that “qualified immunity” applies…