Mark Meadows burned papers in his office after meeting with a House republican who was part of the effort to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, the January 6 committee has reportedly been told
In the testimony provided by one of Mr Meadow’s former aides, Cassidy Hutchinson, she confirmed that she saw the former top Trump official grab documents and light them on fire after taking a meeting with Republican Representative Scott Perry, according to a source familiar with the proceedings who spoke with Politico.
This arrives just a month after a transcript from the same aide, Ms Hutchinson, described how the former White House Chief of Staff had also received intelligence reports leading up to the January 6 riot forewarning of the potential for extreme violence on that day.
Ms Hutchinson, who served as special assistant in the Trump administration, told the select committee during that deposition that “there were concerns brought forward” to her former boss ahead of the violent insurrection, but she was unsure what he did with that information.
The Meadows-Perry meeting occurred in the weeks following the November 2020 presidential election as the former president and his allies tried to overturn the final result.
The Independent has reached out to Mr Meadows’ lawyer for comment on the allegations made in Ms Hutchinson’s testimony, and a communications representative for Rep Perry, but did not immediately hear back from either before publication.
The meeting between Ms Hutchinson and the January 6 Select House Committee lasted for approximately 90 minutes, according to Politico. It was unclear from the testimony whether the alleged burned documents were protected by federal records’ laws from being destroyed.
Rep Perry chairs the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, a voting bloc in the chamber that consists of conservative Republican members, including Florida Rep Matt Gaetz and Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene.
In the immediate aftermath of the Trump loyalists’ efforts to discredit the results of the 2020 election, Rep Perry became an important figure. The Pennsylvanian was reportedly one of the first to try and connect the one-time commander in chief with Jeffrey Clark, a Department of Justice official who was known to be sympathetic to the former president’s cause of invalidating the election.
The select committee has subpoenaed the Pennsylvania congressman over his alleged involvement in attempting to install Mr Clark as acting attorney general, a promotion that was ultimately prevented when a number of senior DOJ officials got wind of it and threatened to quit if it went through.
