Mark Meadows' Jan. 6 texts remind us how much we don't know

As White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows was the gatekeeper to then-President Donald Trump. That is why, as the U.S. Capitol was under attack Jan. 6, it’s his cellphone that filled up with missives from the likes of Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity imploring Trump to do something.

By the time the attack ended, and Congress had gone back to counting the electoral votes that confirmed Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, many of those who had pleaded with Meadows to have Trump call off the insurrectionists had already begun to pretend that their cries for help never happened. Others pivoted to saying the attack wasn’t that big a deal — or even that antifa had really done the attacking. But the messages to Meadows exist; their fear was real. The senders believed that Trump could call off his supporters and end the violence. And no amount of pretending otherwise is going to change that.

Meadows has been going back and forth with the Jan. 6 committee over his level of cooperation — and Congress has grown tired of the game. The committee issued a report recommending he be charged with criminal contempt for refusing to answer the panel's questions about the lead-up to the attack. Monday night’s dramatic reading of Meadows’ text messages into the record ahead of a vote on the contempt referral showcased just how serious Trump’s friends and allies, both inside the Capitol and out, considered the matter at the time.