The select committee had set a deadline for Bannon to produce the requested materials by Thursday, which he missed. The panel also set a date for the following Thursday for Bannon to appear for a deposition.
Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel, two Trump associates who were also issued subpoenas, “are, so far, engaging with the Select Committee,” the statement said.
Politico reported Thursday that Trump is directing Bannon, Meadows, Patel and former communications aide Dan Scavino to defy the committee’s subpoenas.
Asked about that report, a spokeswoman for Trump sent CNBC a statement from the former president vowing that “executive privilege will be defended.”
Earlier Friday, a New York Times reporter tweeted a screenshot of a letter from Bannon’s lawyer responding to the select committee’s subpoena. That letter cites a message from Trump’s counsel Justin Clark, who instructs Bannon not to produce any documents or testimony “concerning privileged material” in response to the subpoena.
Bannon’s lawyer, Robert Costello, wrote that since Trump has said he plans to invoke executive privilege, “we must accept his direction and honor his invocation” of it, the screenshot showed.
“We will comply with the directions of the courts, when and if they rule on these claims of both executive and attorney client privileges,” Costello reportedly wrote.
Costello did not respond to CNBC’s inquiries about that reported letter. A spokesman for Meadows did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment about Trump’s reported instruction for him not to comply with the committee’s subpoena.
“I can confirm that I have responded to the subpoena in a timely manner,” Patel said in a statement sent to NBC by his representative.
The select committee was formed by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Senate Republicans shot down an attempt to form an equally bipartisan “9/11-style” commission on Jan. 6.
The panel, comprising seven Democrats and two Republicans, aims to deliver a definitive report on the invasion, when hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building and derailed an attempt by Congress to confirm President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/08/steve-bannon-defies-subpoena-faces-possible-criminal-contempt-referral.html