Mark Meadows testified before Grand Jury in Special Counsel Investigation of Trump

Mark Meadows, the last White House Chief of Staff under President Donald J. Trump and a potential key figure in investigations involving Mr. Trump, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigations led by the Office of the special counsel, according to two persons who were briefed.

Mr. Meadows is a figure in both of the two separate lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel assigned to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation of Mr. Trump, Jack Smith.

One investigation focuses on Mr Trump’s attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol during congressional certification of the results from the Electoral College on January 6, 2021. The other is an investigation into how Mr. Trump handled hundreds of classified documents after he left office and whether he obstructed efforts to recover them.

It is not clear exactly when Mr. Meadows testified or whether investigators questioned him on either or both of these matters.

For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled and wary of Mr. Meadows’ low-key nature in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going to the grand jury or being interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows remained largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a key witness in the investigation. are.

Mr Trump himself has sometimes asked aides about how Mr Meadows is doing, according to a person familiar with the comments.

When asked about the grand jury’s testimony, an attorney for Mr. Meadows, George Terwilliger: “Without commenting on whether Mr. Meadows testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. the truth where he is required by law to do so.”

Mr. Meadows was a polarizing figure in the White House among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who viewed him as a loose gatekeeper at best during a final year in which the former president aggressively shaped the government in his image.

Mr. Meadows was present at pivotal moments leading up to and after the 2020 election, when Mr. Trump conspired to try to stay in office and prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. would be sworn in to succeed him. Some of them were described in hundreds of text messages Mr. Meadows to the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol before deciding to stop cooperating. Those texts served as a road map for House detectives.

But Mr. Meadows also has insight into the National Archives’ efforts to retrieve about two dozen boxes of presidential materials that officials had heard Mr Trump took with him when he left the White House in January 2021. Mr. Meadows was one of Mr. Trump’s representatives went to the records, and he played a role in trying to discuss the matter with Mr. Trump, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Mr Meadows is also now indirectly linked to a potentially vital piece of evidence that investigators have uncovered in recent months: an audio recording of an interview Mr Trump gave to two people who helped Mr Meadows write a memoir about his years at the White House.

Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, which took place in July 2021 at Mr. Trump’s club in Bedminster, NJ. During the meeting, Mr. Trump referred to a document he appeared to have in front of him and suggested that he should have but couldn’t since he was out of office.

That recording could undermine Mr Trump’s claim that he believed he had released all of the material that was still kept in his properties for months after he left office.