Former President Trump said he waived executive privilege to allow Steve Bannon to testify before the committee on Jan. 6, according to a letter he sent to his former adviser on Saturday.
What’s new: The Justice Department said Trump’s lawyer, Justin Clark, told the Justice Department on June 29 “that the former president has never invoked executive privilege over any specific information or material” related to Bannon, according to a motion filed in District Court in the District of Columbia early Monday and obtained by the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.
Why it matters: Last November, a federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by the panel on Jan. 6.
News Movement: In the letter, Trump recounts how he invoked executive privilege when Bannon first received his subpoena from the committee.
- However, he said he decided to change his stance after seeing “how unfairly” Bannon and others were treated, “you have to spend huge amounts of money on legal fees and all the trauma you have to go through for the love of your country.”
- If a time and place for testimony can be agreed upon, Trump wrote, he would waive executive branch privilege “which allows you to go in and testify truthfully and honestly, as requested by the Committee to Deselect Political Thugs and hacks’.
In a letter to Rep. Benny Thompson (D-Miss.), who has chaired the committee since Jan. 6, a lawyer for Bannon wrote that his client would be willing to testify and would prefer to do so in a public hearing.
- “Mr. Bannon has not changed his position or his heart,” Robert Costello wrote, but noted that “circumstances have now changed,” in reference to Trump’s decision to waive executive privilege.
What they say: The Justice Department said in court filings Monday that “Bannon’s last-minute efforts to testify, nearly nine months after he failed to do so — he has still made no effort to produce records — are irrelevant to whether he intentionally has refused to comply in October 2021 with the special committee’s subpoena.”
- Any evidence or argument “related to his eleventh-hour efforts should therefore be excluded at trial,” the motion added.
Current Status: Exculpatory testimony from the Jan. 6 committee drew millions of viewers and sought to highlight the direct links between Trump and the Jan. 6 violence.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with details from DOJ court filings.
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