Mark Meadows sues Nancy Pelosi and Jan. 6 committee members, accuses them of acting 'in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States'

• Mark Meadows is suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the January 6 select committee.
• Meadows asked the court to invalidate two "overly broad and unduly burdensome subpoenas" the committee issued.

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.

Meadows' legal action came on Wednesday, one day after his lawyer informed the committee that he would no longer cooperate with its investigation.

The basis for Meadows' lawsuit was not immediately clear. The committee subpoenaed him for documents and testimony, and it also subpoenaed Verizon, Meadows' cell phone carrier, to turn over cellular metadata.

Meadows asked the court to invalidate the "two overly broad and unduly burdensome subpoenas," which he claimed were "issued in whole or part without legal authority in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States."

"The Select Committee acts absent any valid legislative power and threatens to violate longstanding principles of executive privilege and immunity that are of constitutional origin and dimension," the complaint said. It also alleged that the Verizon subpoena violated Meadows' First Amendment rights.

The select panel's chair Rep. Bennie Thompson and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney released a joint statement calling Meadows' lawsuit "flawed" and saying it "won't succeed at slowing down the Select Committee's investigation or stopping us from getting the information we're seeking."

The committee will meet next week to advance a report recommending that the House of Representatives hold Meadows in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the statement said.

Meadows' attorney said in a letter to the panel Tuesday that his deposition, which was scheduled for Wednesday, is "untenable" because the committee "has no intention of respecting boundaries" related to former President Donald Trump's broad assertions of executive privilege regarding the Capitol riot investigation.

The committee subsequently announced that it would move forward to recommend criminal contempt charges against Meadows if he did not appear for his scheduled deposition.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the January 6 investigatory panel, also said last week that Meadows undermined his own argument for withholding information from the committee because he wrote about matters related to the Capitol riot in his new memoir.

He's also spoken publicly and in media interviews about the Capitol riot, despite saying he can't share details about it with the select committee because they're shielded by executive privilege.

"If you talk publicly about matters you claim are privilege, you've waived that privilege," the former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti recently noted. "Meadows can't answer [Fox News host Sean Hannity's] questions and refuse to answer questions about the same subject matter from Congress."

Meadows is the third Trump ally that the committee has advanced or is prepared to advance contempt proceedings against. Last month the Justice Department indicted former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on two criminal contempt charges after Congress referred him. And the panel last week moved forward to recommend criminal contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former top Trump appointee at the Justice Department.