Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat and another member of the committee noted that the two House convictions of Mr Bannon and Mr Meadows were criminal cases. If the Justice Department decides to prosecute Mr Meadows like Mr Bannon, both men face imprisonment and fines.
“And that would be true regardless of who controls Congress,” said Schiff.
With the referral of Meadows disdain to the Justice Department, the US Attorney’s Office in Washington will decide whether charges are warranted, and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland will approve or reject their recommendation.
Key aspects of the January 6th investigation
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Mark meadows. House investigators said Mr Trump’s chief of staff played a far greater role than was previously known in the plans to turn down the elections. The House of Representatives voted to recommend that Mr. Meadows be detained in criminal contempt of Congress for defying the panel’s subpoena.
The PowerPoint document. The committee is reviewing a PowerPoint document of unknown origin filled with extreme plans to overturn the election. Mr. Meadows received the document in an email from an unknown sender and turned it over to the panel before ending its collaboration.
Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade. Fox News presenters texted Mr. Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot asking him to convince Mr. Trump to make an effort to stop him. The texts were part of the material that Mr. Meadows had given the panel.
The Willard Hotel. What happened before the uprising at the five-star hotel near the White House has become a primary focus of the panel pushing for responses to gatherings of Trump’s allies involved in the vote overturning the election.
In Mr Bannon’s case, the division moved relatively quickly, taking about three and a half weeks to decide that the contempt charge was warranted.
But the Meadows case is more complicated, legal experts say, in part because Mr Meadows had already submitted numerous documents to the committee, along with a list of documents he was withheld on privilege. Mr Meadows was an administrative officer while advising Mr Trump and his attorney has argued that as a former presidential advisor, he has immunity and is not required to testify.
The Department of Justice has long enforced broad immunity for close presidential advisers, said Jonathan D. Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who served in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, suggested that Mr. Navarro could be next.
“If you fail to do so, we must accuse you of defying the summons,” she said. “We just have to do it.”
There is no doubt that the courts have been moving faster since the change in power in the White House Legal Department. In two separate judgments – the first in 2019, the second last month – judges said Trump’s White House must work with the House’s oversight demands. But the case lasted three and a half months two years ago when Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson released a 120-page statement to end the first phase. Just 23 days elapsed between Mr Trump’s motion to block publication of papers on January 6 and Judge Tanya Chutkan’s verdict against him in November.
