Trump's political action committee donated $1 million to Mark Meadows' nonprofit
- Trump's PAC donated $1 million to the conservative nonprofit that employs Mark Meadows.
- It's the biggest contribution Trump's committee made in the last six months of 2021.
Former President Donald Trump's political action committee Save America donated $1 million last year to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit organization where Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows serves as a senior partner.
As Politico reported, it's one of several donations Trump's PAC made to law firms and other entities linked to people who have been swept up in Congress' investigation into the Capitol riot.
The donation to Meadows' nonprofit was dated July 26, 2021.
Meadows initially cooperated with the House panel investigating the Capitol riot but reversed course in December, refusing to appear for a deposition and suing to block two subpoenas, one of which was issued to Verizon for his phone records.
Trump's PAC also gave $25,000 to a law firm representing the former Trump communications aide Dan Scavino, who tried to anonymously sue the January 6 committee to block a subpoena of Verizon for his phone records.
The political action committee also gave money to Abel Bean Law, which is representing Trump's spokesperson Taylor Budowich. Politico noted that Budowich testified and provided documents to the January 6 committee but recently sued the panel over a subpoena it issued to his bank.
And Save America PAC shelled out to JP Rowley Law PLLC, a firm representing the GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was instrumental in Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and participated in a phone call in which Trump urged Georgia's secretary of state to "find" enough votes to swing the state's results in Trump's favor.
The $50,000 payment to the firm representing Mitchell was described as "legal consulting" and dated November 29, 2021. Less than a month later, she filed a lawsuit seeking to squash the January 6 committee's subpoena of her phone records.
The seven-figure sum that the Save America PAC gave to Meadows' nonprofit was its biggest contribution in the second half of 2021, according to new federal filings. In total, the committee donated $1,350,000 to "like-minded causes and endorsed candidates," the former president's team said in a press release.
Meadows' refusal to cooperate with the January 6 committee's investigation prompted the House to vote to hold him in contempt of Congress. The vote triggered a criminal contempt referral to the Justice Department, which is weighing whether to formally prosecute the former chief of staff.
But the department's deliberations could be complicated by Meadows' lawsuit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the January 6 committee. He asked a 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 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."
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the select panel, said 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."