Trump Issued Subpoena by Jan. 6 Panel, Setting Up Legal Battle Over Trump’s Potential Contempt of Congress
This article has been updated.
President Donald Trump issued a subpoena Friday to the House Intelligence Committee to the White House National Security Council to provide documents related to the Trump administration’s Russia inquiry, setting up a potential legal battle over the White House’s assertion of executive privilege on the matter.
In a letter to Rep. Adam Schiff, the newly-appointed ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Trump said he would comply with the House subpoena when the House Intelligence Committee asked him by Jan. 6 to provide the documents, which he had previously withheld from the panel citing executive privilege.
The subpoena was issued in response to a lawsuit House Democrats brought against the Trump administration in 2017.
The subpoena request from House Democrats to the White House National Security Council was first reported by NBC News and Axios, which separately said the White House had granted a White House lawyer privilege for information related to the Russia inquiry through Jan. 16, the date of the committee’s subpoena.
“It is essential to the ongoing national security of our country that we develop and preserve the full facts and take responsible actions concerning the attacks on our democracy,” Schiff said in a statement. “President Trump has taken the unprecedented step of firing his own Director of National Intelligence and placing that person who led the agency into an unreachable position. In doing so, he has failed the people who elected him and undermined our very national security.”
The White House has refused to comply with the panel subpoena, with a Justice Department spokesperson saying the White House would fight the panel subpoena in court if necessary.
The subpoenas order, which was also first reported by NBC News and Axios, is the latest chapter in the current battle between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House over the investigation into Russia’s interference with the 2016 election.
The congressional probes have been intertwined, with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating the FBI’s mishandling of the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, and the White House investigating the president.
Trump has long asserted executive privilege over information related to the Russia probe, but he has not always invoked the privilege.
In October, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to the White House to provide documents that related to the administration’s counterintelligence investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump did not deliver the documents to the