'Need to End This Call': More Mark Meadows Texts Revealed

The House of Representatives on Tuesday night voted 222-208 to recommend that Mark Meadows be held in contempt of Congress. Two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger (both of whom sit on the select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack) voted with Democrats, CNN reports. The charges will be recommended to the Justice Department, which will make a decision on whether to move forward after Donald Trump's former chief of staff refused to sit for a deposition for the committee. Also Tuesday, as the criminal contempt referral was debated on the House floor, the select committee revealed yet more text messages obtained by Meadows in the days leading up to the attempted insurrection, CNN reports.

One of them was sent from a Georgia government official as then-President Trump asked Georgia's secretary of state to "find" more votes for Trump in that state. "Need to end this call," the text reads. "I don't think this will be productive for much longer." Said Cheney on the House floor, "Some of those text messages, madam speaker, came from members in the chamber right now," including one from the day after the election in which an unnamed lawmaker suggested to Meadows that Republican governors in states that had not yet been called should simply "send their own electors to vote" and let the Supreme Court decide the winner of the election.

Also Tuesday, Sean Hannity addressed the Jan. 6 text he sent to Meadows, which had previously been revealed by the select committee, in which he urged Meadows to get Trump to make a statement asking his supporters to leave the Capitol. "Where is the outrage in the media over my private text messages being released again publicly? Do we believe in privacy in this country? Apparently not," Hannity said on his Fox News show, per Deadline. Laura Ingraham, another texter whose message to Meadows was revealed, also blasted the select committee for the release. "The entire January 6th campaign has become one of revenge and defamation," she said. (More Mark Meadows stories.)