Fox News hosts and Trump Jr urged Mark Meadows to help stop Capitol attack, texts reveal

Jim McGovern, the Democratic chair of the House rules committee, lamented that Fox News hosts privately pushed for an end to the Capitol insurrection on January 6 while publicly downplaying the violence of that day.

McGovern noted that Fox News has not mentioned the texts that some of the network’s hosts sent to Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, since they were revealed last night.

“This would be a good time for these hosts to use their platforms to tell the American people the truth, just like they were privately texting Mark Meadows the truth on that terrible day,” McGovern said. “But I have to say that their silence is deafening.”

The Massachusetts congressman expressed concern that Donald Trump and his allies are trying to “run out the clock” to keep the facts of January 6 from coming to light.

“The lack of curiosity, the lack of outrage, the rationalizations why we shouldn’t be compelling people to testify — it’s just stunning to me,” McGovern said. “We’re at a crossroads. Our democracy is being threatened, and this is serious.”

McGovern also warned that America may see future attempts to overturn election results if lawmakers do not uncover all the details of January 6.

“Coups very rarely succeed the first go-around, but they oftentimes do the second time around,” McGovern said. “If there’s ever a moment to be above politics, it’s now.”

During the hearing aimed at taking up the contempt resolution against Mark Meadows, a Republican on the House rules committee, Michael Burgess, attempted to compare the January 6 insurrection to past protests held on Capitol Hill.

“We’ve had bad protests here at the Capitol before. I was here when the Affordable Care Act went through the legislative process,” Burgess said.

“You don’t think we had some really upset people outside the Capitol during those days? Of course we did. … It’s what we do here.”

Bennie Thompson, the chair of the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, vehemently rejected Burgess’ comparison.

“I don’t know how you can draw a comparison between the Affordable Care demonstration and what occurred on January 6,” Thompson said.

“People broke into this institution. They harmed people. They did all kinds of things. … This is not the America that we live in.”

Jim McGovern, the Democratic chair of the House rules committee, said the texts that Mark Meadows received from Fox News hosts and Donald Trump Jr on January 6 were “nothing short of a bombshell”.

“The top personalities on Fox News, who are today trying to cover up the gravity of what happened on January 6, knew who to go to to stop the insurrection that day,” McGovern said at the start of the rules committee hearing to take up the contempt resolution against Meadows.

McGovern added, “The president’s son knew who to go to. When Don Jr texted that ‘it has gone too far and gotten out of hand,’ what was ‘it’ that he was referring to?

“The ‘it’ was the attempt to overthrow the election. The ‘it’ was the attempted coup in the United States of America. Yet the president did nothing in those critical moments.”

It’s also worth noting that the texts messages were among the records that Meadows voluntarily turned over to the select committee before ending his cooperation with investigators, so there are likely even more bombshells in the records he has withheld.

The House rules committee is now meeting to take up the resolution calling for Mark Meadows to be held in criminal contempt for defying a subpoena from the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

The meeting comes one day after the select committee voted to recommend criminal contempt charges against Meadows, who said last week he would no longer cooperate with investigators.

The rules committee meeting will set up a full House vote on the contempt resolution, and the Democratic-controlled chamber is expected to vote to refer the matter to the justice department.

The justice department will then determine whether to prosecute Meadows over the matter. A federal grand jury has already indicted former Trump aide Steve Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying his subpoena.

During the hearing yesterday, Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, read text messages that Mark Meadows received on January 6.

The texts, which Meadows turned over to the committee before ending his cooperation with investigators, include pleas from Fox News hosts and Donald Trump Jr urging the chief of staff to take action.