​The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot recommended criminal contempt charges Monday for former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows over his refusal to testify.

The bipartisan committee voted 9-0 to move forward.

Meadows, a former Republican congressman from North Carolina, has turned over thousands of pages of emails and texts to the House committee but ditched a subpoena to appear for a deposition last week. 

Late Sunday evening, the committee, which is being led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), released a 51-page resolution laying out the reasons he should be cited for contempt and the questions they want answered about the White House and former President Donald Trump’s role in the riot.

“Mr. Meadows was in contact with at least some of the private individuals who planned and organized a January 6 rally, one of whom reportedly may have expressed safety concerns to Mr. Meadows about January 6 events. Mr. Meadows used his personal cell phone to discuss the rally in the days leading up to January 6,” Thompson wrote in the report.

The report alleges that Meadows emailed an unidentified person on the eve of Jan. 6 to say the National Guard would be on standby to “protect pro Trump people” as they marched on the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election vote.

The report also said that Meadows sent an email to the staff of Vice President Mike Pence, arguing that Pence had the power to declare the state-certified vote in dispute – a move that would have potentially allowed electors loyal to Trump be selected. 

Pence ultimately certified the results of the election after the Capitol had been cleared of the rioters for President Biden.

The committee said Meadows’ role as chief of staff makes him a crucial witness to conversations members of the Trump administration had with rally organizers leading up to Jan. 6 and the events that transpired on the day in the White House “to delay or prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Despite handing over the trove of documents to the committee, Meadows has refused to testify and last week he sued the panel’s members and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming that the investigation is “overly broad and unduly burdensome”.

“The Select Committee acts absent any valid legislative power and threatens to violate longstanding principles of executive privilege and immunity that are of constitutional origin and dimension,” Meadows says in the court filing. 

“Without intervention by this Court, Mr. Meadows faces the harm of both being illegally coerced into violating the Constitution and having a third party involuntarily violate Mr. Meadows rights and the requirements of relevant laws governing records of electronic communications,” it added.

But Thompson said Meadows’ claims of executive privilege aren’t relevant.

“All courts that have reviewed this issue have been clear: even senior White House aides who advise the President on official government business are not immune from compelled congressional process. Instead, Mr. Meadows acknowledges that this theory of immunity is based entirely on internal memoranda from [Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel] that courts, in relevant parts, have uniformly rejected,” wrote Thompson.

Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger, warned Thompson that failing to afford Meadows executive privilege over private conversations he had with Trump “would do great damage to the institution of the Presidency.”

Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser and longtime political ally of Trump, was indicted by a federal grand jury last month on two contempt of Congress charges.

With Post wires