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Jan. 6 committee votes to hold Trump ally Steve Bannon in contempt for ignoring subpoena

  • October 20, 2021

Trump attempted to assert executive privilege to withhold some of the documents sought by the committee, but President Joe Biden’s administration refused to back that claim, prompting Trump to file suit.

“President Biden does not uphold the former President’s assertion of privilege,” Biden’s counsel Dana Remus wrote to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero.

Robert Costello, Bannon’s attorney, had leaned on Trump’s privilege claims when explaining Bannon’s refusal to cooperate with the probe by producing documents and sitting for a deposition.

In a letter to the committee, Costello cited a message from Trump’s counsel Justin Clark, who instructed Bannon not to produce any documents or testimony “concerning privileged material” in response to the subpoena.

″[W]e must accept [Trump’s] direction and honor his invocation” of it, Costello wrote in the letter, adding, “We will comply with the directions of the courts, when and if they rule on these claims of both executive and attorney client privileges.”

The panel has flatly rejected the privilege argument from the former president and from Bannon, who departed the Trump administration years before the Capitol riot.

Trump’s lawsuit “is nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our probe. Precedent and law are on our side. Executive privilege is not absolute and President Biden has so far declined to invoke that privilege,” Thompson and Cheney said in a statement Monday evening.

“Additionally, there’s a long history of the White House accommodating congressional investigative requests when the public interest outweighs other concerns,” they added.

“It’s hard to imagine a more compelling public interest than trying to get answers about an attack on our democracy and an attempt to overturn the results of an election.”

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel, two Trump associates who were also subpoenaed have been engaging with the probe, the committee said.

Their depositions, scheduled for last week, have been slightly postponed “as they continue to engage with our investigation,” a select committee aide told CNBC.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/19/steve-bannon-contempt-vote-jan-6-committee.html

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