A federal judge rejected former President Donald Trump‘s executive privilege claims and ordered former top aides, including Mark Meadows, to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Meadows, a former White House chief of staff, was subpoenaed along with other former ranking aides by special counsel Jack Smith for testimony and records pertaining to his investigation, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.
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Former Trump aides Nick Luna, John McEntee, and former DHS official Ken Cuccinelli were also included in the order, sources told ABC News.
Smith was requested by the Justice Department in November to oversee the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office in January 2021.
Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump’s claim of executive privilege in a sealed order last week, which led her to order the top officials to testify. Other notable figures named include former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, and former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, according to the sources.
Trump is likely to appeal the ruling, and a spokesperson for the former president lambasted the DOJ for “continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long-accepted, long-held, constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.”
“There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion because they are clearly losing the political battle,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Howell’s seven-year term came to an end last week, and she is being succeeded by a new chief judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg, who will oversee grand jury matters related to Smith’s investigations. Both judges are appointees of former President Barack Obama.
The same court previously rejected Trump’s claim of executive privilege to block testimony from two aides to former Vice President Mike Pence, Greg Jacob and Marc Short, ruling it is up to the current president to assert executive privilege.
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Attorneys for the former president and an attorney for Pence argued on Thursday to Boasberg that Pence shouldn’t have to comply with a subpoena to testify in Smith’s investigation.
It’s not clear whether Boasberg will rule on the Pence case, and the former vice president has said he would take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court if needed.
