Ex-President Donald Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is displaying a “strange quietness” that suggests he may have flipped on his old boss, according to attorney George Conway.
Conway, a frequent Trump critic who announced that he was divorcing former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway earlier this year, said that a lack of chatter from Meadows could mean that “something’s up” during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday.
Trump revealed on Tuesday that he had received a “target letter” informing him that he is the focus of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal probe of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome.
Target letters are often the last step before a criminal indictment, with the ex-president having received a similar letter shortly before being indicted last month on federal felony charges stemming from Smith’s classified documents probe.
ALEX EDELMAN/AFP; Robert Alexander
Cooper asked Conway whether a CNN report indicating that Trump’s team had not identified any other person who had received a target letter meant that the former president’s allies were turning on him.
Conway said that the situation regarding target letters was “very difficult to read into” before suggesting that a lack of public comment from Meadows may mean that he is cooperating in Smith’s investigation.
“We have seen some very strange quietness from, for example, Mark Meadows,” Conway said. “I just have the feeling something’s going on there. I mean, he’s somebody who ought to be every bit as exposed as Donald Trump.”
“Yet, he has been so quiet,” he continued. “And there just seems like there’s something up with him.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office and Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger via email on Wednesday.
The New York Times and other outlets reported last month that Meadows did testify before a federal grand jury as part of Smith’s investigation. A report from The Independent also claimed that Meadows had flipped on Trump by taking a plea deal, exchanging “limited immunity” for his testimony.
At the time, Terwilliger told the newspaper that the report of his client’s purported plea deal was “complete bull****,” although he did not explicitly address whether Meadows had testified against Trump.
Legal experts have predicted that Meadows turning on Trump would be disastrous for the former president, as the two were in regular communication during Trump’s ill-fated attempts to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election and during the time leading up to the January 6 attack.
Trump, the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election, is already facing dozens of felony counts related to the documents case and at the state level, accused of falsifying business records in New York.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies any wrongdoing, arguing that he is the victim of a political “witch hunt” and “election interference.”
