The real reason Kayleigh McEnany is cooperating with the January 6th Committee
Kayleigh McEnany has turned over text messages to the 1/6 committee, per ABC News. No surprise. The most useful witnesses are the people who were in the room, witnessed the crimes, didn’t personally commit them, have no underlying criminal liability, and don’t want a contempt charge.
This is in contrast to someone like Mark Meadows, who – based on the publicly available evidence alone – pretty clearly committed election fraud and potentially committed seditious conspiracy. Meadows is looking at perhaps spending the rest of his life in prison for these underlying crimes. Given that, the threat of a contempt of Congress charge is mere insult to injury. Meadows can’t make his overall legal troubles disappear simply by cooperating, so (for now) he sees contempt as the least of his troubles.
But for someone like Kayleigh McEnany, it really is that simple. Yes, she falsely claimed from the podium that there was election fraud in 2020. But that alone wasn’t going to be enough to nail her for something like seditious conspiracy – and her lawyers know it. So she’s better off just cooperating, giving up everyone else in the process, and then walking away without any future legal headaches. Should she be allowed to get off scot free? Probably not. But she’s not the real target. If she gives up people like Trump and Meadows, and they go to prison, then what happens to her ultimately doesn’t matter.
