Unless Mark Meadows has flipped, he’s having the worst day ever
The DOJ has indicted Trump adviser Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress today, weeks after the January 6th Committee referred him for prosecution. This is obviously bad news for Navarro, bad news for Donald Trump, and great news for the January 6th Committee, along with being good news for the rule of law. It also brings the Mark Meadows situation into tighter focus.
The January 6th Committee referred Mark Meadows for contempt months ago. Thus far the DOJ has neither indicted Meadows for contempt, nor dropped the case. Why would the DOJ sit on the Meadows referral for this long, without giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down? We keep hearing the “DOJ is lazily doing nothing” argument, but that was always a very weak argument. And now that the DOJ has indicted Navarro for contempt, that argument goes in the trash bin.
This really only leaves two possibilities when it comes to Meadows, which were always the two dominant possibilities. The first is that because the criminal case against Meadows is so massive and complex, the DOJ didn’t want to give Meadows an opening by prematurely indicting him on contempt. We’ve seen Steve Bannon try to use his own contempt indictment to try to get the courts to give him a peek at what else the DOJ is bringing against him. This hasn’t worked, but it’s been a pain for the DOJ.
The second possibility is more straightforward: Meadows hasn’t been indicted because he’s already cut a deal with the DOJ and has been cooperating.
Take your pick. It’s tough to try to figure out which of these two scenarios is the case with Meadows. It’s just clear that one of the two scenarios almost certainly has to be true. If that wasn’t obvious before today, it’s plainly obvious in light of the Navarro contempt indictment. The bottom line: if Meadows hasn’t already flipped, he’s having the worst day ever, because today cements the fact that he’ll end up indicted.
