Trump Tells Former Aides Not To Cooperate With Select Committee

According to The Washington Post, former President Donald Trump has told four former senior aides not to comply with a congressional probe into the January 6 insurrection.

The Post reviewed a letter by an attorney for Trump instructing Mark Meadows, Kash Patel, Dan Scavino, and Steve Bannon to essentially ignore the subpoenas they received from the committee.

The reports came hours after the release of a damning Senate report detailing Trump’s efforts to subvert the Justice Department and overturn his November election loss to Joe Biden.

In a letter to the four, Trump’s lawyers argued that his communications and records are protected from disclosure by executive privilege and attorney-client privilege.

The Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Attack has called the four ex-advisors, and other people involved in the unrest, to help it piece together the ties between Trump’s White House and the hundreds of Trump backers who forced their way into the Congress, halting a joint session meant to confirm Biden as president.

At the time, Meadows was White House chief of staff; Scavino handled social media for Trump; Bannon was a former political strategist who remained active in Republican operations; and Patel was a White House national security adviser whom Trump named to a senior Pentagon job following his election loss.

The January 6 committee ordered the four to hand over documents and appear for interviews with investigators next week.

Legal experts have raised doubts that Trump can claim executive privilege over his actions in his final weeks in office to prevent his aides from talking.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House select committee, threatened possible contempt charges for Trump’s former advisors, but said it ultimately would be up to the chairman of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson.

“I believe this is a matter of the utmost seriousness and we need to consider the full panoply of enforcement sanctions available to us, and that means criminal contempt citations, civil contempt citations and the use of Congress’s own inherent contempt powers,” Raskin said Thursday.

 

 

 

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