ABC News reported Monday evening that Mark Meadows, former Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump, has been granted immunity by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in exchange for testimony given to special counsel Jack Smith.
The claim, however, has been disputed by Meadows’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, who told CBS: “I told ABC that their story was largely inaccurate. People will have to judge for themselves the decision to run it anyway.”
According to ABC reports, Meadows has spoken with Smith and his team of DOJ prosecutors on at least three occasions this year. Meadows has reportedly told DOJ prosecutors that Trump was being “dishonest” when he initially claimed to have won the 2020 election. “Obviously we didn’t win,” Meadows is alleged to have told Smith and his team.
DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s team is said to be especially interested in claims made by Meadows in a book he published and whether he still believes, or ever believed, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. ABC News reports Meadows told Smith that despite what he wrote in his book, he does not believe there was any fraud in 2020. Meadows claims he privately informed Trump the allegations of fraud made by Rudy Giuliani were unfounded and untrue.
While the news of Meadows’s testimony appears to come as a blow to former President Donald Trump’s defense in his federal prosecution in Washington, D.C., Meadows has thus far not corroborated a key accusations made by Smith and the DOJ. Meadows is said to have been specifically asked by investigators if Trump ever acknowledged to him that he lost the election. Meadows replied he had never heard Trump say he had lost.
The accusation that former President Trump sought to knowingly defraud the United States – i.e. that he knew he lost the election but said otherwise – is one of the most critical pieces of Smith’s prosecution. So far, Smith has been unable to produce any evidence that Trump believed anything other than that he had won the 2020 presidential election.
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