Mark Meadows: The house votes to propose that Trump's former chief of staff be changed with criminal contempt.

On Monday, a House select committee investigating the Capitol incident decided to recommend criminal prosecution for former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, thus punishing Donald Trump's most senior adviser for refusing to testify about the 6 January uprising.

A week after halting his cooperation with the chamber's committee probing the Capitol insurgency, the US House of Representatives passed a motion proposing criminal contempt charges against Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's former chief of staff.

According to the chamber's records, this is the first time the House has voted to hold a former member in contempt since the 1830s.

It's the 6 January panel's latest show of force as it probes the biggest attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years, leaving no stone unturned . Lawmakers are adamant on getting answers swiftly and reasserting congressional power, which Trump undermined throughout his presidency.

The head of the group, Bennie Thompson, remarked, "History will be written about these days, about the job this committee has performed."

Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, joined Trump's government in March 2020. Meadows "consistently urged that citizens and high-ranking government officials accept the authority of Congress to perform its job," said Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee.

Raskin opened Tuesday's discussion by reading from newly disclosed, panicked messages from the day of the attack, which show members of Congress, Fox News anchors, and even Trump's son pleading with Meadows to encourage the outgoing president to act fast to halt his supporters' three-hour assault.

Meadows was charged as a result of the committee's recommendation on Tuesday. The case now goes to the Department of Justice, which will decide whether or not to prosecute.

The move against Meadows was dubbed "evil" and "un-American" by Republicans on Tuesday, who said it was a diversion from the House's job. Meadows was also backed by Trump in an interview, who described him as "an honorable man."

The committee's leaders have promised to hold anybody who refuses to cooperate with their inquiry accountable, and the Justice Department has already charged Trump's close supporter Steve Bannon with two charges of contempt after he refused to comply with his subpoena. Bannon and Meadows could face up to a year in prison if convicted on each allegation.

Meadows' attorney, George Terwilliger, said in a Tuesday statement that the former chief of staff had never ceased cooperating but that he could not be forced to attend for an interview. Meadows had "completely cooperated" with respect to materials in his possession that were not protected, according to the attorney.

Meadows has filed a lawsuit against the panel, claiming that two subpoenas are "overly broad and unnecessarily onerous."

The text conversations sent to Meadows on the day of the insurgency, according to committee members, raised new concerns about what was going on in the White House and what Trump was doing while the attack was underway. Meadows was to be questioned about the exchanges, which included 6,600 pages of documents collected from personal email accounts and nearly 2,000 text messages, by the committee. None of the messages have been shared in their entirety by the panel.

At the panel's Monday evening hearing, Republican congressman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the panel's vice chairwoman, said that one key question highlighted by the texts was whether Trump had attempted to impede congressional certification by refusing to convey a strong message to the rioters to cease.

Cheney stated, "These messages leave no doubt." "The White House was well aware of the events in the Capitol."

In order to compile the most thorough record of the events leading up to the insurgency and the deadly siege itself, the investigative panel has already interrogated more than 300 witnesses and issued subpoenas to more than 40 persons.