The Day After The Bombshells: Full House Vote on Meadows’ Contempt Charge
Laura Coates Live
CNN
4.2 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2021
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
BREAKING NEWS: a full House vote is expected this evening on Mark Meadows’ criminal contempt referral to the DOJ. No former White House Chief of Staff has faced criminal charges since H.R. Haldeman’s role in the Watergate scandal.
Also tonight: in key swing states, the anti-democratic movement has already changed laws and ousted Election officials with the aim of overturning future results. David Leonhardt of the New York Times joins give his insight into the big picture on this growing threat to American democracy. Plus, the GOP gains an advantage as redrawn maps kill swing districts, Republican Paul Gosar hypocritically takes credit for Covid relief funding he voted against twice and is 'Build Back Better' dead?
Hosted By Michael Smerconish.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Does it hand it over to Michael Smerkhanish and CNN tonight, Michael? |
| 0:04.8 | Anderson, thank you so much. I am Michael Smerkhanish. Welcome to CNN Tonight, where we have |
| 0:09.3 | breaking news. At any moment, we expect the House to vote on whether to hold former President |
| 0:14.2 | Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in contempt of Congress. The top members of the bipartisan |
| 0:19.5 | January 6 select committee scoffed at his claims of immunity over former President Trump's |
| 0:25.0 | supposed executive privilege. He told us the day before his deposition, the same day his book |
| 0:33.3 | was published that he would no longer cooperate with our investigation. And that he wasn't coming |
| 0:40.4 | in to be interviewed. If you're making excuses to avoid cooperating with our investigation, |
| 0:46.8 | you're making excuses to hide the truth from the American people about what happened on January |
| 0:53.2 | 6. You're making excuses as part of a cover. If the House does vote to find Meadows in contempt, |
| 1:00.8 | the Justice Department will soon consider indicting him, like it did with Steve Bannon last month. |
| 1:06.3 | And today, the committee's vice chair Liz Cheney shared more of those damning texts, |
| 1:10.6 | flooding Meadows phone coming from fellow Republican lawmakers, while the heart of our democracy |
| 1:15.5 | was under attack. Another one, the President needs to stop this ASAP. Another one, fix this now. |
| 1:31.7 | Remember, those are fellow Republicans serving in Congress begging for an end to the violent |
| 1:36.3 | insurrection. But also, keep an ear out for what Congresswoman Cheney implied again this afternoon. |
| 1:42.4 | And Mr. Meadows' testimony will bear on another fundamental question before this committee. |
| 1:49.9 | And that is whether Donald J. Trump, through action or inaction, |
| 1:55.3 | corruptly sought to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes. |
| 2:03.1 | That language, her word choice, appears to be chaining signaling to the DOJ that she believes |
| 2:09.8 | Trump himself could be responsible for a more serious crime, obstruction of Congress. |
| 2:16.0 | Take a look at this section of the law. Defined in part as quote, |
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