House Jan. 6 committee issues subpoenas for Trump aides and advisers, including Meadows and Scavino

By , Jacqueline Alemany and ,

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has issued subpoenas to two top Trump White House officials, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, as well as to Kash Patel, who was serving as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary that day. An additional subpoena targets longtime Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

The subpoenas were announced Thursday evening by the committee, which has moved its inquiry into a new, more aggressive stage after requesting White House records last month and sending preservation requests for records to telecom and social media companies.

Trump and his team have condemned the select committee’s inquiry since it began, vowing to fight its demands for documents and interviews with claims of executive privilege. A debate about a former president’s ability to restrict access to information and individuals has already begun in Washington — and is likely to become dramatically more intense now that these first subpoenas have been issued.

[Biden White House leans toward releasing information about Trump and Jan. 6 attack, setting off legal and political showdown]

Along with asking Meadows, Scavino, Patel and Bannon to hand over records, the committee is instructing the four men to appear for depositions in mid-October.

Bannon and Scavino did not respond to requests for comment. Meadows could not be reached.

“Talk to my lawyers,” Patel said when reached for comment Thursday night before hanging up the phone.

Trump issued a lengthy statement that said he would fight the subpoenas by invoking executive privilege. In the statement, he also made the type of false claims about the 2020 election that were embraced by the mob of his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 and engaged in violent clashes with the police.

“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,” he said.

The executive privilege questions will be especially focused on Meadows and Scavino because of their roles in the White House and access to Trump before, during and after the Jan 6 disturbance.

On the day of the attack, Meadows and Scavino were firsthand witnesses to the president’s state of mind and hopes for his speech on the Ellipse, where he urged thousands of protesters to go up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and to “fight like hell” for their country. After violence broke out at the Capitol and police shot a rioter, Meadows, working with Scavino and with help from Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, repeatedly tried to get Trump to issue a public message to tell his supporters to stop their protest and leave the Capitol grounds. These details were first reported in the book “I Alone Can Fix It” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.

[‘I Alone Can Fix It’ book excerpt: The inside story of Trump’s defiance and inaction on Jan. 6]

In a letter accompanying the subpoena to Meadows, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), writes that the panel has obtained “credible evidence” of Meadows’s involvement within “the scope of the select committee’s inquiry.” The letter cites several examples of Meadows’s involvement with the events that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, along with his communication and proximity to the former president leading up to and on the day of the insurrection.

Thompson also notes that Justice Department documents reveal that Meadows “directly communicated with the highest officials at the Department of Justice requesting investigations into election fraud matters in several states,” and made contact with “several state officials to encourage investigation of allegations of election fraud.”

Thompson wrote to Scavino that “it appears you were with or in the vicinity of former president Trump on January 6 and are a witness to his activities that day. You may also have material relevant to his video taping and tweeting messages on Jan 6.” The letter cites reports in a new book, “Peril,” by Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, that Scavino was also with Trump on Jan. 5 “when he and others were considering how to convince Members of Congress not to certify the election for Joe Biden.”

In its letter to Bannon, the select committee writes that the longtime activist and adviser has “information relevant to understanding important activities that led to an informed the events at the Capitol” on Jan. 6.

“For example, you have been identified as present at the Willard Hotel on January 5, 2021, during an effort to persuade Members of Congress to block the certification of the election the next day, and in relation to other activities on January 6,” Thompson writes. “You are also described as communicating with then-President Trump on December 30, 2020, and potentially other occasions, urging him to plan for and focus his efforts on January 6.”

Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) worked in White House national security positions under Trump before transferring to the Pentagon. When the panel requested documents from the Pentagon in August, Patel was mentioned specifically. The committee requested “documents and communications concerning possible attempts by President Donald Trump to remain in office after January 20, 2021.” The panel also asked for communications about martial law.

On Thursday, the committee subpoenaed Patel for “all documents and communications to, from, or referring to Patel, relating to civil unrest, violence, or attacks at the U.S. Capitol; challenging, overturning, or questioning the validity of the 2020 election results; or the counting of the electoral college vote on January 6, 2021.”

Source: WP