(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Mark Meadows, the ex-North Carolina congressman and last chief of staff for former President Donald Trump, spoke with Special Counsel Jack Smith at least three times in the past year in exchange for legal immunity, ABC News reported.
Rumors of Meadows’s defection from Team Trump have persisted ever since his subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee in 2021.
Meadows was one of three Trump advisers charged by the Democrat House with “contempt of Congress” for reluctance to comply with the sham Star-Chamber investigation. But unlike Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, he was never charged by the Justice Department due to his eventual cooperation.
The cherry-picked findings of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked committee largely formed the basis for what became Smith’s case against Trump, alleging that his efforts to challenge the highly suspicious and heavily disputed outcome of the 2020 election amounted to an attempted usurpation of the presidency.
Sources close to the matter said specifically that Meadows was granted immunity if he would agree to testify before a grand jury.
According to those same sources, Meadows repeatedly emphasized to Smith and his legal team that he tried to persuade Trump that the 2020 election voter-fraud allegations had no basis.
“Obviously we didn’t win,” Meadows reportedly told Smith, calling Trump’s rhetoric after the election “dishonest.”
Despite the longstanding murmurs, Meadows’s betrayal of Trump hits hard, especially given that Trump has, in the past, referred to Meadows as a “special friend” and “a great chief of staff—as good as it gets.”
Further complicating the matter, Meadows himself has delivered contradictory remarks about the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election.
For instance, he penned a book in 2021, The Chief’s Chief, in which he wrote that the election was both “rigged” and “stolen,” emphasizing the Left’s aid from “allies in the liberal media.”
According to Meadows, there was “actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze.”
Meadows also wrote at the time that people engaged in fraud knew that “eventually, these irregularities would come to light,” and so they “attacked anyone who dared ask questions about what they had done.”
But now, Meadows has changed his tune, claiming instead that he has not seen any concrete evidence of election fraud, and calling the 2020 election one of the most secure in American history.
Meadows’s alleged betrayal prompted a spokesperson from Trump’s campaign team to address the matter.
“Wrongful, unethical leaks throughout these Biden witch-hunts only underscore how detrimental these empty cases are to our Democracy and System of Justice and how vital it is for President Trump’s First Amendment rights to not be infringed upon by un-Constitutional gag orders,” the spokesperson said.
“President Trump will not be deterred by Crooked Joe Biden’s election interference and will continue to focus on winning back the White House and Making America Great Again,” the spokesperson added.
Trump was fined for a second time on Wednesday by New York judge Arthur Engoron for criticizing the far-left judge in the midst of testimony from another one-time Trump confidante who betrayed him under pressure of left-wing lawfare attacks, Michael Cohen.
Engoron, who previously imposed a gag order preventing Trump from criticizing his radical law clerk, forced Trump to the witness stand to clarify a remark he made during a trial break and later deemed his testimony “not credible.”
At least two other former members of Trump’s inner circle of legal advisers—attorneys Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell—have accepted plea deals in a separate case in Fulton County, Ga., with the implication being that they may be compelled to take the stand against Trump.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
