House committee subpoenas Bannon
WASHINGTON — Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Tuesday refused to answer questions from the House Intelligence committee about his time working for President Donald Trump, provoking a subpoena from the panel’s Republican chairman.
Bannon walked into a closed-door meeting with House members Tuesday morning and was still being grilled Tuesday evening as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian election inference. Lawmakers also wanted answers from him about Trump’s thinking when he fired FBI Director James Comey. The committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, issued the subpoena after Bannon refused to answer questions about his time on the presidential transition or his work in the Trump White House, said Nunes spokesman Jack Langer. It’s unclear if Bannon was more forthcoming after the subpoena was issued.
A spokeswoman for Bannon did not respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday. A White House official said the White House did not seek to exert executive privilege over Bannon — a move that would have barred him from answering certain questions — because they didn’t have to. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “no one” had encouraged Bannon not to be transparent during questioning but there’s a “process of what that looks like.”
“As with all congressional inquiries touching upon the White House, Congress must consult with the White House prior to obtaining confidential material. This is part of a judicially recognized process that goes back decades,” Sanders told reporters.
The committee also had planned to press Bannon on other “executive actions” taken by Trump that have drawn interest from congressional investigators prying into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives, said another person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Those elements bear directly on the criminal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia and whether the president obstructed justice by firing Comey or by taking other actions to thwart investigators.
The focus on Bannon follows his fall from power after being quoted in a book saying that he sees the president’s son and others as engaging in “treasonous” behavior for taking a meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Trump argued there was no evidence of collusion between his campaign and Kremlin operatives and quickly disavowed Bannon, who apologized a few days later but was stripped of his job leading the conservative news site Breitbart News.