After what appear to be a series of fruitless and time-consuming negotiations, the attorney for former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made it clear on Thursday that his client was not going to appear, or product documents for, the House Select Committee on Jan. 6. Responding to that committee, the attorney said that Meadows “remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

It now appears they’re going to get a chance to do so more quickly than Meadows might have anticipated. That’s because, despite the fact that a request to hold Steve Bannon in contempt is still awaiting an official decision from the Department of Justice after almost a month, the committee has now delivered Meadows an ultimatum and a deadline.

In a Thursday evening letter, Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson informed Meadows’ attorney that his client must appear before the committee on Friday, Nov. 12 to provide testimony, answer questions, and turn over documents by 10 AM ET. If not, wrote Thompson, the committee will view his absence as “willful noncompliance” with the subpoena that Meadows was sent all the way back on Sept. 24, leaving the committee with no choice but to send another criminal referral across the street to the Department of Justice.

It’s a demand that should hold the serious threat of being placed in jail until compliance, or being sentenced to six months in prison. But whether that still holds true is an absolute mystery.

As far as existing court cases go, the ability of Congress to hold witnesses in contempt seems clear enough. The existing law, as defined by Supreme Court rulings on cases such as Watkins v. United States (1957) and Eastland v. United States’ Servicemen Fund (1975) seems clear in showing that the “power of the Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process” and that to conduct those investigations, Congress must be able to compel testimony and the production of documents. 

Those defining cases show Congress operating with an intention that may seem downright scary today. Watkins involved the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities attempting to force a labor organizer into providing the names of former members of the Communist Party. The committee lost that case, fortunately. Eastland featured the almost as sketchy Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security seeking records from a nonprofit organization that had published articles critical of the Vietnam War. The Senate subcommittee won the day.

Between them, these cases helped lay out the limits of Congressional authority. House or Senate committees can’t demand anything from anyone and start locking up people willy-nilly. However, that inherent investigative power means that Congress can hold people who refuse to testify in contempt as long as they can show the information requested is within the purview of the committee’s work.

It is “unquestionably the duty of all citizens to cooperate with the Congress in its efforts to obtain the facts needed for intelligent legislative action,” the Court wrote in the Watkins case. “It is their unremitting obligation to respond to subpoenas, to respect the dignity of the Congress and its committees and to testify fully with respect to matters within the province of proper investigation.”

And still, the Court ruled against the committee on Watkins, because the goals of the committee itself were too vague and the demands placed on the witness violated his Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination. 

Both Watkins and Eastland were about defining the limits of Congressional powers to hold people in contempt, but the Court never expressed any doubt that those powers exist. In the case of both Bannon and Meadows, the questions they are being asked and the documents being demanded are directly aimed at their knowledge of events leading up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The charter of the select committee is expressly:

There seems to be no doubt that the documents and testimony being sought from Meadows, and from Bannon, fall within that definition.

As Thompson’s letter states in its opening paragraph:

Until this week, Meadows was reportedly “negotiating” with the committee, which had granted him what was described as a “short” period to work out limits on the documents and testimony he might provide. However, it became clear that Meadows was essentially doing what Trump himself has done so often: simply stalling for time and attempting to run down the clock. Unless there is some unexpected last-minute maneuver, expect a contempt citation for Meadows to also be raised in the committee and to follow the citation issued concerning Bannon to the House floor.

And then everyone can go back to waiting on the Department of Justice to do … whatever it’s doing.