The Daily Beast reports:

It turns out Mark Meadows may have good reason to not want to turn over all of the communications on two personal phones and two Gmail accounts.

After the Jan. 6 Committee disclosed just a few choice text messages between Meadows and Fox News hosts, an anonymous lawmaker, and Donald Trump Jr. about the insurrection, the battle for all of Meadows’ communications has taken on new meaning.

And Meadows’ assertions of executive privilege are undermined by a law he should know well.

Former President Trump’s chief of staff is refusing to turn over some personal emails, text messages, and encrypted chats by claiming that his old boss still retains some executive privilege over them.

But if that’s the case, the Jan. 6 Committee is now arguing, then Meadows should have turned those communications over to the National Archives on his way out the White House door.

“It appears that Mr. Meadows may not have complied with legal requirements to retain or archive documents under the Presidential Records Act,” reads a committee report released Sunday night. The report noted a growing concern that “materials may now be lost to the historical record.”

What little we know of those private communications is plenty damning enough. On Monday night, as the committee voted to hold Meadows in criminal contempt, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) read aloud text messages to Meadows from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity, and even Trump’s own son Don Jr., in which they all begged to have the president intervene. He did not. [Continue reading…]