Former President Donald Trump is appealing a judge’s order that his former chief of staff and other top aides must testify before the federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 riot, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday.
The appeal comes after U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell’s ruling this month that said Mark Meadows and aides including Dan Scavino and Stephen Miller need to provide testimony despite Trump’s invocation of executive privilege.
The judge’s decision and Trump’s appeal were filed under seal because of the active grand jury investigation. The court docket shows the appeal was filed Wednesday, and the source confirmed that the appeal concerns Howell’s earlier ruling.
Others who were directed to testify under Howell’s order are former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, ex-national security adviser Robert O’Brien, former Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary Ken Cucinelli and former White House aides Nick Luna and John McEntee.
Legal experts say a criminal investigation usually supersedes executive privilege, as it did when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to hand over tapes of his Oval Office conversations.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appeal, which was first reported by Bloomberg News. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined comment.
The ruling was one of Howell’s last as the judge overseeing legal challenges to special counsel Jack Smith’s dual probes into Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his handling of documents with classification markings found at his Mar-a-Lago resort. The case in Washington is now being overseen by her successor as chief judge, James “Jeb” Boasberg.
Boasberg denied a different Trump executive privilege claim Monday, when he ruled that former Vice President Mike Pence has to comply with a subpoena to testify about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, a source familiar with decision told NBC News.
Michael Kosnar contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
