Posted on 10/07/2021 10:13:10 PM PDT by bitt
The select committee also sent subpoenas to two “Stop the Steal” organizers and a group affiliated with the event that preceded the mob violence.
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump has instructed his former aides not to comply with subpoenas from the special congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot, raising the prospect of the panel issuing criminal referrals for some of his closest advisers as early as Friday.
In a letter reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s lawyer asked that witnesses not provide testimony or documents related to their “official” duties, and instead to invoke any immunities they might have “to the fullest extent permitted by law.”
The House committee has ordered four former Trump administration officials — Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Dan Scavino Jr., a deputy chief of staff; Stephen K. Bannon, an adviser; and Kash Patel, a Pentagon chief of staff — to sit for depositions and furnish documents and other materials relevant to its investigation. They all faced a Thursday deadline to respond.
Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the select committee, has threatened criminal referrals for witnesses who do not comply with the subpoenas, and said the panel expected witnesses “to cooperate fully with our probe.” The move amounted to a declaration of war by Mr. Trump on the investigation, and raised legal questions about how far the committee could go in compelling information from a former president and his advisers.
The committee is demanding that Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patel submit to questioning next Thursday, and Mr. Bannon and Mr. Scavino the following day.
It is unclear whether President Biden’s team will see fit to extend executive privilege — which shields a sitting president’s communications and deliberations from disclosure — to the former president.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Maybe. Probably they’d be found in Contempt. Certainly so if they give answers that are not germane. But if they try to give actual answers there’s the risk of saying something inaccurate and getting railroaded on an incidental process crime of Perjury.
This is muckraking, anyway; not a serious investigation. Let ‘em huff and puff.
Sure. But in my book, that makes them immediately guilty. I apply that standard across the board, towards commies, libs, nazis, jackbots, yahoos, anybody who declares the Fifth. What do you have to hide? If it was ANTIFA dressed up as MAGA (as was the predominant viewpoint here on FR for days and weeks after 1-6) then come clean with it and expose it and put it in the sunlight of truth. Why be afraid?
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