Aha, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been held in contempt of Congress by the full House after the committee charged him with defying a subpoena. Possible criminal charges loom for Meadows from the House’s vote of 222-208, clearly along party lines. Key to the contempt charge is that he did nothing to stop his boss from urging on the insurrection at the Capitol last January.
This is part of a one-two punch against the former president after a federal judge ruled on Tuesday that his tax filings can be released by the Treasury Department. With this judgment, the House Ways and Means Committee gains access to Trump’s tax returns, files he had fought to keep from public scrutiny.
It’s still to be determined if the files will actually be exposed to the public, but it’s clearly a another blow to the widening chink in his armor and Meadows’ vacillations and shielding himself behind the president’s so-called executive privilege proved ineffective.
Meadows joins Trump’s other confidante and ringleader Steve Bannon, who has openly defied the House for a deposition and refused to produce documents related to the attack. He awaits arraignment and has surrendered his passport.
Neither faces long jail terms or expensive fines if convicted, but it does mean that we are slowly witnessing key members of his gang being picked off. It is our hope that it gets closer and closer to the boss himself, and brings him before the justices—of course, not those in the Supreme Court.
And we are certainly excited to hear that the attorney general of Washington, D.C. has taken steps to sue the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, aiming to hurt Trump’s supporters financially and converge financial charges with the criminal charges they face.
The network of right wingers, white supremacists, and reactionaries is getting the necessary hits to both repair some of the damage it has done and hopefully stifle any future anti-democratic uprisings.