certify the election and turn it into a crucible moment for democracy. i think they re really going to try to explain how that happened and who is responsible for it. what s the strategy here? is there a potential risk that they run that if it enters a more public phase here, that could deter more people from cooperating? well, i think people have made their decisions, by and large, on whether they re going to be cooperating. you know, i think it remains to be seen whether these contempt citations, the threats of contempt citations, are going to make a difference. clearly the department of justice has shown they re willing to enforce these contempt citations. i think that s a big unanswered question for the months ahead, is will this committee have success in compelling people who really would prefer not to cooperate and having them come in. i think some people will fight for the last.
harass and they try to put their political opponents in jail. in a matter of weeks, the committee has passed three contempt citations. today, we vote on holding mark meadows in contempt of congress. on september 23, 2021, the committee served meadows is subpoena for a sweeping set of documents and a deposition. in october, president trump instructed mr. meadows to maintain his executive privilege in any response to that subpoena. mr. meadows told the select committee he would give them any information they requested that wasn t protected by executive privilege. he gave the select committee over 6,800 pages of information. including 1100 documents and 2300 text messages.
eyes to the 1/6 committee, the only group in town trying to track this down. and laurence tribe said, nearly a year has passed since the insurrection, not one person in power has been held accountable, and not one safeguard for democracy has been added. and some would say, the democrats just aren t killers. some people wish the democrats would be more aggressive. the committee, i think, has tried to address some of these concerns by, for instance, bringing contempt citations against steve bannon. the thing that has, i think, surprised many people since january 6th is the, what has happened on the other side. the unwillingness, the disinterest on the part of
these contempt citations, the u.s. attorney in the words of the law, shall present it to a grand jury. now, the justice department has traditional viewed that law as discretionary under the belief that the congress can t tell the justice department who to prosecute. but it will be up to the u.s. attorney, and there are several factors weighing i think for and against this. on the one hand, bannon s got a claim of executive privilege here, but it s weak. the biden administration has waived it. executive privilege applied only to a president s official duties, not to possibly discussing how to undercut the election. and bannon wasn t in the white house at the time. so those are all factors that would lean toward charging him with obstruction. on the other hand, there is still some weight to the president s executive privilege claim. it s somewhat diminished because biden isn t honoring, but there s something to it. he could say bannon, that he was acting on the advice of double and some
office has the right to waive executive privilege which he s done. trump is no longer president. he can t invoke it. so i think it s really just a stalling technique. i think bannon may have things to say, but i do agree it s also going to kind of set a precedent. if one guy gets away with not responding, then everyone will do it. remember, the reason why we re able now to support and enforce subpoenas is because we actually have a justice department doing its job. under the trump administration, they were not about to enforce contempt citations. now we have a justice department that independently evaluates this, that will, i believe, bring action and this is the way the system is supposed to work. if bannon is forced to come and testify, he does have an option, and that would be to invoke the fifth amendment. that would be quite a scene.