Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, told Spectrum News that she is disappointed that the Department of Justice has not yet acted on contempt charges against Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump's chief of staff.

"I am concerned that the Mark Meadows referral has not received attention yet," Lofgren said in an interview with Spectrum News on Thursday. 

The House of Representatives voted in December to hold Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, in contempt, the first time the body voted to hold a member in contempt since the 1830s. The vote was largely along party lines.

Meadows was the second person the House voted to hold in contempt for defying its subpoena, the first being former White House adviser Steve Bannon. A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in November of last year; his trial is scheduled for July. But the Justice Department has not yet charged Meadows.

At a meeting of the Jan. 6 panel this week, members expressed their frustration with the Justice Department and its leader, Attorney General Merrick Garland, for not yet taking action against Meadows.

"Attorney General Garland, do your job, so that we can do ours," Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria said Monday.

"We are upholding our responsibility," California Rep. Adam Schiff said. "The Department of Justice must do the same."

"This committee is doing its job," Lofgren said at Monday's meeting. "The Department of Justice needs to do theirs."

"Certainly you could make an arguable claim of privilege, perhaps for some of his communications," the California Democrat told Spectrum News on Thursday. "But clearly, you know, we outlined communications that by no conceivable stretch of the imagination would be covered by executive privilege."

"And further, you can’t just say ‘I’m not going to come in.’ There’s no case law that supports that,” Lofgren continued. "But certainly his communication with state legislators in the variety of states – that's not executive privilege, and material that you discuss publicly, you waive the privilege."

"It's disappointing that there's been no action," she added.

Despite the setback, Lofgren expects the public can have faith in the committee’s work.

“We’re going to do the best we can and pursue every lead that we have,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told Spectrum News on Thursday. “We’re getting all the information we can from every source to piece it together.”

The Jan. 6 panel has interviewed hundreds of witnesses related to the deadly insurrection and issued dozens of subpoenas to a number of individuals, including former Trump White House officials, former Trump campaign officials and close allies of the former president.

This week, the committee recommended contempt charges against former Trump advisers Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro.

Like many of her colleagues, Lofgren expressed concern about reports of a nearly eight-hour gap in then-President Donald Trump’s phone calls on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I mean, the expectation is, under the law, that phone calls placed by the President will be recorded, that they were made,” Lofgren told Spectrum News. “If that didn’t happen, in this case, that’s not in conformity with what the law expects and requires.”

"We certainly do know that phone calls were made in that timeframe, because we've had other testimony," she said. "In fact, there's been public reporting about phone calls made during that timeframe by the former president to various people. So it's our intention to discover the answer to that, and also what was done and what was said."

Though the committee’s work is far from over, Lofgren said that she is "impressed" by her colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

“The two Republicans on the committee are very conservative — I mean, if you took their voting records and my voting record, there wouldn’t be a lot of overlap,” she said, referring to Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. “They’re super conservative, but they’re honest, and they have decided that ti’s important to find the truth out."

"We’re all working together in a respectful way to do just one thing: Find the truth, and then tell it," she added.

Lofgren told Spectrum News that the panel hopes to have public hearings this spring.