Sam Nunberg, a former aide to the Trump campaign, will refuse to appear before a federal grand jury as part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a report.
Nunberg received a grand jury subpoena from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller requesting him to testify in Washington, D.C., on Friday and turn over documents, according to the Washington Post.
However, he does not plan to comply.
The subpoena requests records pertaining to President Trump and nine others, including former White House communications director Hope Hicks, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and Roger Stone, a longtime informal adviser to Trump.
Documents requested include emails, invoices, telephone logs, calendars, and “records of any kind.”
“What they sent me was absolutely ridiculous. They wanted every email I had with Roger Stone and with Steve Bannon. Why should I hand them emails from November 1st, 2015?” Nunberg told MSNBC. “I was thinking about this today. I was preparing it. Should I spend 50 hours going over all my emails with Roger and Steve Bannon? And then they wanted emails that I had with Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski. Are you giving me a break? It’s ridiculous.”
Nunberg said he hasn’t gone over any of the emails requested by Mueller’s team, and said he is “not going to produce them every email I had with Steve Bannon and Roger Stone from November 1 of 2015.”
“I’m not interested in handing all my emails over,” Nunberg said. “I’m not interested in it.”
Speaking with MSNBC, Nunberg was asked whether he believes Mueller and his team “have something” on Trump.
“I think they may,” he said. “I think that he may have done something during the election, but I don’t know that for sure. … The way they ask questions about anything I heard after I was fired from the campaign, to the general election, to even Nov. 1, it insinuated to me that he may have done something.”
Nunberg previously met with Mueller and his team and, in a subsequent interview on CNN, said his meeting with Mueller indicated to him the special counsel and his investigators “suspect something” about Trump.
“I suspect that they suspect something about him,” he said. “The way they asked about his business dealings, the way they asked if you had heard anything even during, while I was fired, it just made me suspect that they suspect something about him.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders rejected Nunberg’s comments speculating Mueller has damaging information about Trump.
“I definitely think he doesn’t know that for sure because he’s incorrect,” Sanders told reporters during Monday’s White House press briefing. “As we’ve said many times before, there was no collusion with the Trump campaign. Anything further on what his actions are? He hasn’t worked at the White House so I certainly can’t speak to him or the lack of knowledge he clearly has.”
Sanders stressed the White House is cooperating with Mueller and his team.
Nunberg worked on Trump’s presidential campaign for just a few weeks and said Trump “treated me like crap.” He was fired after disparaging Facebook posts were uncovered.
“But when I’m in there and they ask me to go to the grand jury after I sat there for close to 5-and-a-half hours, I’m not going back in,” Nunberg said of his interview with the special counsel. “[Trump] may be right that this is a witch hunt.”
