This winter, after receiving a subpoena from a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s makes an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Mark Meadows commenced a fragile dance with federal prosecutors.

He had no selection however to indicate up and, finally, to testify. Yet Mr. Meadows — Mr. Trump’s remaining White House chief of workers — initially declined to reply sure questions, sticking to his former boss’s place that they had been shielded by govt privilege.

But when prosecutors working for the particular counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump’s govt privilege claims earlier than a decide, Mr. Meadows pivoted. Even although he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he determined to belief Mr. Smith’s group, in line with an individual acquainted with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly organized to speak with them not solely concerning the steps the previous president took to remain in workplace, but in addition about his dealing with of categorised paperwork after he left.

The episode illustrated the cautious steps Mr. Meadows took to navigate authorized and political peril as prosecutors in Washington and Georgia closed in on Mr. Trump, in search of to keep away from being charged himself whereas additionally sidestepping the profession dangers of being seen as cooperating with what his Republican allies had solid as partisan persecution of the previous president.

His high-wire authorized act hit a brand new problem this month. While Mr. Meadows’s technique of focused help to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely stored him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed in opposition to Mr. Trump in Washington, it didn’t assist him keep away from comparable fees in Fulton County, Ga. Mr. Meadows was named final week as one in all Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a sprawling racketeering indictment filed by the native district legal professional in Georgia.

Interviews and a assessment of the instances present how Mr. Meadows’s techniques mirrored to some extent his tendency to keep away from battle and go away totally different individuals believing that he agreed with them. They had been additionally dictated by his distinctive place in Mr. Trump’s world and the authorized jeopardy this offered.

Mr. Meadows was Mr. Trump’s high aide in his chaotic last months in the White House and a firsthand witness not solely to the president’s sprawling efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but in addition to some early strands of what advanced into an inquiry into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of categorised paperwork.

Mr. Meadows was there, at instances, when Mr. Trump listened to entreaties from exterior allies that he use the equipment of the federal government to grab voting machines and re-run the election. And he was on the telephone when Mr. Trump tried to stress Georgia’s secretary of state to seek out him ample votes to win that state.

He was additionally there on Jan. 6, 2021, as Mr. Trump sat in a small room off the Oval Office, watching tv as a mob of his supporters tried to thwart the peaceable switch of energy.

Mr. Meadows, who declined to remark for this text, has refused to debate his involvement in any of the prison instances. The full extent of what he shared with federal prosecutors stays intently held, as are the phrases below which he spoke to them. But his method to coping with them couldn’t have been extra totally different from Mr. Trump’s.

Where the previous president repeatedly ranted about witch hunts and the weaponization of the justice system, Mr. Meadows went quiet, staying off TV and refusing to name his former boss. Mr. Trump lashed out on the investigators on his tail, attacking them at each flip, however Mr. Meadows sought to construct relationships when and the place he might.

All of this has made Mr. Meadows a determine of intense hypothesis and anxiousness within the former president’s interior circle. The feverish conjecturing amongst Mr. Trump’s allies was reignited this weekend, when ABC News revealed a number of the first particulars of what Mr. Meadows instructed federal prosecutors.

ABC reported that Mr. Meadows — like different senior Trump officers, together with Mike Pence, the previous vp — had undercut Mr. Trump’s declare that he had a “standing order” to routinely declassify any paperwork that had been taken out of the Oval Office. Those included ones that ended up at his non-public golf equipment in Florida and New Jersey.

Mr. Meadows’s discussions with investigators didn’t shock some on the Trump group. For months, Mr. Trump, his advisers and his allies had been deeply suspicious of Mr. Meadows. But having lately obtained discovery material from Mr. Smith’s team — proof the prosecutors gathered throughout the inquiry — the Trump group now has visibility into what Mr. Meadows instructed investigators, in line with individuals acquainted with the matter.

“This witch hunt is nothing more than a desperate attempt to interfere in the 2024 election as President Trump dominates the polls and is the only person who will take back the White House,” stated Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, declined to touch upon the info specified by the ABC story.

The plan by Mr. Meadows to be quietly cooperative with prosecutors with out agreeing to a proper deal was hardly a novel technique. It is what many topics of investigations do when they’re dealing with publicity to critical prison fees. But on this case, the stakes are particularly excessive for each Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Meadows’s aim was to offer investigators the data they requested when he believed he was legally obliged to offer it. But he additionally used the regulation to push again when he thought-about the requests to be inappropriate or probably harmful to his personal pursuits, the individual acquainted with his authorized sport plan stated.

The technique started enjoying out nearly two years in the past, when Mr. Meadows agreed to offer some paperwork to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault however fought its try to take his deposition.

In one occasion, when Mr. Meadows was subpoenaed by the House committee for paperwork and testimony, he supplied them with an explosive trove of textual content messages from the interval main as much as Jan. 6. The messages confirmed Mr. Meadows speaking with everybody from Fox News hosts to Virginia Thomas, the spouse of Justice Clarence Thomas. They had been embarrassing to each him and Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Terwilliger decided that because the messages weren’t associated to Mr. Meadows’s communications with the president, they weren’t protected by govt privilege.

The texts had been a useful useful resource to the committee workers and supplied investigators with a highway map to the gamers and actions taken as they had been starting their work. The determination to offer them to the House panel infuriated Mr. Trump’s group. But additionally they purchased respiratory area for Mr. Meadows.

Mr. Terwilliger took a distinct place on Mr. Meadows testifying to the committee. At first, he instructed the panel’s workers that they might not legally compel Mr. Meadows to take action and that even when they did handle to get him on the document, he would assert govt privilege over something associated to his dealings with Mr. Trump. The negotiations over the interview broke down when the committee subpoenaed Mr. Meadows’s telephone information with out first informing him.

There was, nonetheless, another excuse Mr. Terwilliger was involved about having Mr. Meadows inform his story to the House committee, in line with the individual acquainted with Mr. Meadows’s authorized plan.

Even in early 2022, the individual stated, Mr. Terwilliger suspected that Mr. Meadows can be known as upon to inform the Justice Department what he knew about Jan. 6 and the weeks main as much as it. And he didn’t need Mr. Meadows to already be on the document in what he seen as a politicized investigation. If Mr. Meadows was going to inform his story, the individual stated, Mr. Terwilliger needed him to take action for the primary time to investigators from the Justice Department.

It was then that the panel really useful Mr. Meadows be charged with contempt of Congress, a place that the total House in the end agreed with. The Justice Department, nonetheless, citing the “individual facts and circumstances” of his case, declined to press fees.

While division officers by no means totally defined their causes for not going after Mr. Meadows, the transfer was in distinction to the way in which they dealt with comparable instances involving two different former Trump aides, Stephen Okay. Bannon and Peter Navarro. Both had been charged by the division with contempt of Congress after they refused to cope with the committee altogether.

Mr. Meadows took the same course when he was subpoenaed this winter by the federal grand jury in Washington investigating Mr. Trump’s makes an attempt to overturn the election. The former president had maintained that his aides mustn’t testify to any issues coated by govt privilege.

When Mr. Meadows first appeared earlier than the grand jury, he gave solely restricted testimony, declining to reply any questions he believed had been protected by govt privilege, which shields some communications between the president and members of his administration.

But he was obliged to speak in confidence to prosecutors after they requested the chief decide in Washington on the time, Beryl A. Howell, to rule on the query of govt privilege in an effort to compel his full account.

By that time, the individual acquainted with the authorized technique stated, Mr. Meadows — in contrast to Mr. Trump — had come to the conclusion that the highest prosecutors within the particular counsel’s workplace had been engaged in a good-faith effort to gather and analyze the info of the case. Trusting within the course of, the individual stated, Mr. Meadows would search to place himself as a impartial witness — one who was neither pro- nor anti-Trump.

“George believes witnesses are not owned by anybody,” stated a second one that has labored intently with Mr. Terwilliger. “They’re not there for a person; they’re not there against any person; they’re not on one person’s side. They’re there to tell the truth.”

Typically, when individuals have such conversations with prosecutors, they obtain restricted immunity that stops their very own phrases from getting used in opposition to them in a future prosecution. But investigators can use the data they supply to pursue fees in opposition to others.

Ultimately, Judge Howell issued an order forcing Mr. Meadows to return to the grand jury. He answered questions for a second time, giving an unvarnished, privilege-free account.

The federal indictment in opposition to Mr. Trump incorporates a mixture of accounts about Mr. Meadows’s habits, some favorable to him. He is talked about as enabling the false elector scheme to maneuver ahead by emailing marketing campaign workers members to say, “We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.”

But federal prosecutors additionally famous within the indictment that Mr. Meadows, after observing Georgia’s signature verification course of, instructed the previous president that election officers had been “conducting themselves in an exemplary fashion.” He additionally pushed for Mr. Trump to inform rioters to go away the Capitol on Jan. 6.

By distinction, Mr. Meadows fought efforts to compel him to testify within the separate case in Georgia inspecting Mr. Trump’s makes an attempt to stay in workplace after his election loss. He additionally invoked his proper to keep away from self-incrimination when he finally appeared earlier than the grand jury.

The indictment that resulted from the Georgia investigation lays a lot blame at Mr. Meadows’s ft. It portrays him as performing as a keen confederate within the effort to overturn the 2020 election, assembly with state-level officers, soliciting telephone numbers for Mr. Trump and ordering up memos for methods to maintain him in energy.

Prosecutors in Georgia additionally accused Mr. Meadows of a felony over his position in an infamous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, during which Mr. Trump pushed the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes.”

In an indication that he views the federal venue as extra favorable terrain, Mr. Meadows has requested for the Georgia fees in opposition to him to maneuver to federal courtroom. In courtroom papers filed final week, Mr. Terwilliger stated he supposed to problem the case by arguing that Mr. Meadows was resistant to prosecution on state fees for any actions he undertook as a part of his federal job as White House chief of workers.

Mr. Meadows, who now lives in South Carolina, stays an influential back-room determine in conservative circles in Washington. He is a senior companion on the Conservative Partnership Institute, the place he’s paid about $560,000 yearly, in line with the group’s most up-to-date monetary report.

In July 2021, a couple of weeks after the House voted to create the Jan. 6 committee, the political motion committee aligned with Mr. Trump, Save America, donated $1 million to the institute.