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- Steve Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating January 6.
- Bannon's lawyer claimed he did not have to comply because of Trump's executive privilege.
- Bannon served as Trump's White House chief strategist in 2017.
Steve Bannon, an ex-aide to Donald Trump, heeded the former's president call and refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, according to a letter obtained by multiple news outlets.
Bannon's attorney, Robert Costello, wrote in a letter to House investigators that Bannon does not have to fulfill their request for information because of Trump's right to keep information confidential through executive privilege.
The move comes after Trump's legal team had instructed the president's former aides, including Bannon, not to comply with the congressional subpoenas, which were issued last month.
"It is therefore clear to us that since the executive privileges belong to President Trump, and he has, through his counsel, announced his intention to assert those executive privileges enumerated above, we must accept his direction and honor his invocation of executive privilege," Costello wrote to the House committee on Thursday, which was the deadline to respond to the subpoena.
The committee also requested information and documents from other former Trump administration officials, including Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Kash Patel. The subpoenas asked Bannon and Patel to sit for depositions on October 14 and for Meadows and Scavino to sit the next day.
The House committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, could seek criminal referrals for witness who fail to comply, according to The New York Times.
"Mr. Bannon has indicated that he will try to hide behind vague references to privileges of the former President. The Select Committee fully expects all of these witness to comply with our demands for both documents and deposition testimony," Thompson and committee ranking member GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said in a statement.
Thompson and Cheney added, "we will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral."
Bannon served as a top campaign aide during Trump's 2016 presidential run. He then joined the White House in 2017 as a chief strategist before leaving that August.
Trump distanced himself from Bannon last summer after Bannon was arrested on fraud charges related to an online fundraising scheme to build a US-Mexico border wall. Federal prosecutors accused him, along with three associates, of defrauding donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Bannon has denied the charges. At the time, Trump claimed he didn't "know anything about the project" and that it was a "very sad thing by Mr. Bannon."
The pair began talking again as Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In his final hours in office, Trump pardoned Bannon.