Nancy Pelosi, Jan. 6 committee sued by Mark Meadows to block subpoenas

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as the members of the House Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, are being sued by Donald Trump’s former chief of staff and former GOP congressman Mark Meadows. Meadows is suing Pelosi and the panel in order to block the enforcement of subpoenas issued to him.

Meadows has asked a federal court through a lawsuit to block the enforcement of the committee’s subpoenas that were served to him and to Verizon for his phone records, according to the complaint filed Wednesday. Meadows’ lawsuit follows the news of the committee making a criminal contempt referral on the former Trump aide for refusing to show up during his deposition in compliance with the subpoena issued to him.

In the suit, Meadows claims that the subpoenas are “broad and unduly burdensome.” The former congressman also claimed that the bipartisan panel “lacks lawful authority to seek and obtain” the information being requested by them. Meadows recently walked back his decision to cooperate with the panel after initially doing so.

The committee’s vice-chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, responded to the news of the lawsuit, saying that the committee looks forward “to litigating that.” Cheney also said that Meadows is refusing to answer questions about the documents that he voluntarily turned over to the committee.

“The committee has received a number of extremely interesting, non-privileged documents from Mr. Meadows. These include text messages and emails from his private cell phone and private email account. He’s produced these documents, they are not privileged,” said Cheney. “They include documents that are directly related to what President Trump should have been doing on January 6 during the attack, and now he is refusing to answer questions about those non-privileged documents.”

In other related news, Pelosi is facing pressure from House Liberals to take action against Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert for her Islamophobic remarks aimed at Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar. They warned that a failure to take action by Democratic leadership would mean that they are condoning bigotry and threatening the safety of minorities in the country.

Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders have moved to immediately take action against Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar for peddling violent rhetoric and threatening Democratic lawmakers.