Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows will ultimately end up “copping a plea” to contempt of Congress charges and “cooperate” with the investigation into the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Steele said, “The reality still remains that legally, the former chief of staff finds himself highly exposed here, largely because of his own doing. Not just what he sets out in the book, but more importantly, what he’s already given over to the January 6 Commission.”

He continued, “They have these documents now. Those documents corroborate and further along the timeline they’ve been working on since the commission was formed, putting together with other documents that they have gotten access to.”

Steele added, “Now finding himself exposed on the back end of this, trying to come down and say, well, I’m not going to participate, I’m not going to cooperate. Dude, you’re exposed now! They’re going to lower the hammer on you. And what do you do then? Cooperate. And I think that will be the next phase of what you see happen because there is no place else to go now that they’ve got the documents that further along and clarify the timeline, your degree of involvement in it in perpetuating January 6. At some point, you’ll start talking about, as we say in the street, copping a plea.”

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