Former President Donald Trump will invoke executive privilege in an attempt to block four top administration figures from complying with subpoenas issued by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 incidents at the Capitol, Newsmax reports, as the deadline for compliance looms Thursday.
"He is going to invoke executive privilege, and that means that people like Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, a top adviser, and Kash Patel, another top adviser will not be able to comply with these subpoenas coming from the Jan. 6th commission," Newsmax's Grant Stinchfield reported Wednesday night. "This is what you get with President Trump. You get a man who fights back. That's what we love about President Trump, and he's sticking it to these people trying to go after him."
The subpoenas, issued on Sept. 23, set a deadline for Thursday for Meadows, former White House chief of staff; Scavino, former White House deputy chief of staff for communications; Patel, a former Defense Department official, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to supply documents and emails to the panel, reports Politico.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson has said he's prepared to issue "criminal referrals" to anyone who does not comply with the subpoenas' deadlines.
Former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, Trump’s defense lawyer, is expected to tell the four advisers that they can't testify before the committee without hindering Trump's right, as president, to have gotten confidential advice from them, reports MSN.
If the four men do not comply, the committee has several options, including referring them to the Department of Justice.
Trump announced through a statement through his Save America PAC on Sept. 23, the day that the subpoenas were issued that he would invoke executive privilege where it was appropriate to stop the committee from seeking answers from the four advisers.
"We will fight the subpoenas on executive privilege and other grounds, for the good of our country, while we wait to find out whether or not subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America," Trump said in his statement.
He also slammed the Jan. 6 committee as the "'Unselect Committee' of highly partisan politicians, a similar group that perpetrated the now proven lie of Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and many other scams."
The select committee consists of just two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pulled all five of his Republican appointments from the panel after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected two of them for supporting Trump's calls to investigate the 2020 presidential election before lawmakers certified President Joe Biden's Electoral College win on Jan. 6.
"Hopefully the 'Unselect Committee' will be calling witnesses on the rigged presidential election of 2020, which is the primary reason that hundreds of thousands of people went to Washington, D.C., in the first place," Trump said in his statement.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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