Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is in trouble "up to his neck" amid the ongoing January 6 probe of ex-President Donald Trump, according to legal analyst Glenn Kirschner.
During the latest episode of his Justice Matters podcast on Monday, Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, discussed a Washington Post article claiming that Meadows "joked" about 2020 presidential election falsehoods pushed by his old boss before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The article claimed that Meadows mocked Trump in a series of text messages over false claims that President Joe Biden was elected due to thousands of votes by "dead people." Kirschner suggested that Meadows could be under intense legal pressure due in part to pushing false election claims after purportedly acknowledging that they were not true.
"Knowing there was no fraud, Mark Meadows persisted ... in his false claims that there was significant election fraud," Kirschner said. "He continued to assist and enable a criminal president in that president's efforts to overturn the results of a presidential election, to thwart the will of the American voters."
"Mark Meadows is in it up to his neck," he continued. "The only question that remains is will Mark Meadows be a cooperating witness, or will he be a marquee defendant who is indicted together with Donald Trump?"
Kirschner then said that he was not certain whether Meadows had cooperated with Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation. He did not believe that Meadows was granted his immunity in exchange for his testimony, saying that Smith would have reserved the move only for "a relatively low-level Trump lackey."
"I don't think that's the stuff Special Counsel Jack Smith is made of," said Kirschner. "Giving somebody that high up on the criminal food chain, Mark Meadows, chief of staff to the criminal president ... giving that kind of a person immunity? I don't see it."
Kirschner went on to urge Meadows to "do the right thing" by cooperating with Smith's investigation.
"I sure hope Mark Meadows has seen the light and has decided to make right what he made so very wrong," he said. "Let's hope Mark Meadows has it in him to do the right thing. You know Mark, better late than never."
Newsweek reached out to Meadows' attorney George Terwilliger via email for comment on Monday.
With Trump facing the prospect of an imminent third indictment, legal experts and analysts have continued to speculate about the possibility that his former chief of staff may have turned against him.
Speculation about Meadows cooperating has ramped up due to his recent silence. During a CNN interview last week, conservative lawyer and frequent Trump critic George Conway said that the silence could signal that there was "something up with" Meadows.
Following reports claiming that Meadows had testified in exchange for "limited immunity" last month, Terwilliger insisted that his client's purported plea deal was "complete bull****," although he did not explicitly address whether Meadows had testified against the former president.
