Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Sunday said he is not confident that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has handed over all relevant materials to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
“I’m not confident that Meadows has handed over everything at all,” Kinzinger said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation”
Kinzinger’s comments came days after The Washington Post and CBS News obtained 29 text messages sent between Meadows and conservative activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that discussed efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
The House voted to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress in December after the ex-chief of staff refused to testify before the investigative panel. Meadows had initially said he would cooperate with the select committee, agreeing to sit for a deposition, but later reversed his stance.
He did, though, turn over thousands of text messages, emails and other correspondences to the committee that shined a light on behind-the-scenes events before and during the Jan. 6 attack.
Kinzinger, a member of the Jan. 6 panel, said on Sunday that he was unable to confirm or deny the existence of the text messages between Meadows and Ginni Thomas.
The Illinois Republican also said that Meadows stopped cooperating with the panel “in an attempt to make Donald Trump happy.”
“We gave him plenty of space to come back to resume that, he has not. And in fact he’s waived executive privilege, you know, a thousand times by presenting us what he already has,” Kinzinger said.
“So no, I’m not convinced he’s handed over everything to us, and that’s why it’s in the [Department of Justice’s (DOJ)] hands now whether to prosecute him for content. He has contempt not just for Congress, for his old institution of Congress, and thereby for the American people. I hope DOJ does the right thing, and I hope we get all the information that not, it’s not Congress, … the American people deserve these answers,” he added.
–Updated at 11:37 a.m.