Mark Meadows to be prosecuted for loyalty

On Tuesday, a majority of the US House of Representatives agreed to prosecute Mark Meadows, former chief of staff of former President Donald Trump. He previously refused to testify before the parliamentary committee investigating the Storming of the Capitol on January 6.

By Monday, the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee had unanimously agreed to have Meadows prosecuted for his refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation.

The entire House of Representatives then had to vote on it. That happened Tuesday. The vote was 222 to 208, with only two Republicans joining the Democrats to support the measure.

Now it’s up to the U.S. Department of Justice to decide whether Meadows will really be prosecuted. It would be the first time in almost 200 years that a former congressman has been prosecuted for contempt of Parliament.

Meadows was initially scheduled to appear before the parliamentary committee, but through his lawyer he announced that he no longer intended to do so. The president and vice-president of the commission complained that the former chief of staff did provide all sorts of relevant information in a new book “which he is now promoting and selling”.

The commission announced on Monday that Meadows had written in an email the day before the attack on the Capitol that the National Guard would stand by to protect pro-Trump protesters. According to the commission, the e-mail was one of the cases on which it had intended to question him.

On January 6, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the controversial election result from being officially approved.