Bannon came to speak with the House Intelligence Committee under a subpoena the panel issued on the spot last month, when he refused to answer questions related to the transition period and his tenure in the White House. The interview came after Bannon met with investigators in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe on Monday and Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the sessions.
.. Bannon has put no preconditions on his interviews with Mueller. But he presented intelligence panel members with a list of only 25 questions that he would be willing to answer related to anything that took place after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. According to the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), those questions had been “literally scripted” by the White House, and Bannon’s answer to all of them was “no.”
When the committee tried to push Bannon to answer questions that were not on his list, he repeatedly told members that the White House had not authorized him to engage on those queries. At no point, people familiar with the interview said, did Bannon voluntarily elaborate on his answers.
.. Republicans and Democrats alike have been angered by Bannon’s repeated attempts to dismiss questions based on a claim to executive privilege that Trump never formally invoked, even when served with a subpoena.
.. Intelligence Committee member K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) said Thursday that he, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and a few others would decide whether to accept Bannon’s legal arguments against answering the panel’s questions or take punitive measures such as declaring him in contempt. The decision-makers will not include panel chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Conaway said.
.. Schiff, however, demanded that the committee move to hold Bannon in contempt as soon as possible.
“I think contempt is the only road left open to us,” the Democrat said.
.. the White House sent the committee a letter outlining its argument for why executive privilege could apply to the transition period, according to panel members. But lawmakers said that letter was not a formal invocation of executive privilege, and they continue to reject the premise that privilege can apply to the period when Trump was not in the Oval Office.
Panel members on both sides of the aisle also stressed that Bannon could not cite nonexistent privilege as an excuse to avoid their questions.
.. Should lawmakers seek a citation, a vote in the House Intelligence Committee would first be required — and later, probably, a resolution by the whole House — before the case would be transferred to the courts.
.. If Bannon does not settle with the committee, the matter could linger in the courts far beyond the panel’s projected schedule to wrap up its probe. That, Schiff surmised, could be “part of the White House stratagem.”
.. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) led the push for Bannon to answer lawmakers’ questions and to issue him a subpoena. Now several Republicans say that holding Bannon in contempt, if he does not cooperate, will be necessary to send a message to this and future administrations that they cannot ignore congressional oversight.
Steve Bannon Will ‘Tell All to Mueller’
Special counsel subpoenas estranged Trump confidant Steve Bannon in Russia probe
declining to answer questions about his White House and presidential transition tenure in the House inquiry.. Mr. Bannon refused to answer some questions from Congress despite having been subpoenaed by the House committee while he was giving testimony... Mr. Bannon told lawmakers that he was willing to answer questions but that he had been asked by the White House not to disclose details about his time in the administration and the presidential transition between administrations.
.. Though his appearance before the House committee was at first voluntary, he was issued a mandatory subpoena by the committee in the middle of the meeting to force him to testify. Even after being issued the subpoena, Mr. Bannon remained unwilling to answer some of the questions, citing a request from White House attorneys
.. The White House is claiming that executive privilege governs any information Congress wants from Mr. Bannon’s stint in the White House and the presidential transition, the person close to Mr. Bannon said.
.. Mr. Bannon’s stance is that no executive privilege exists “within” the executive branch, given that Mr. Mueller, appointed by the Justice Department, “is part of the executive branch.”
Kamala Harris Is (Again) Interrupted While Pressing a Senate Witness
Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, was cut off by Republican senators on Tuesday as she questioned Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the latest high-profile Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in its investigation into Russian election interference.
.. But the moments were notable as the second time in a week that Ms. Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent and is the only minority woman on the committee, was interrupted by two male colleagues during a hearing.
.. Last Wednesday, Ms. Harris was interrupted by Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the committee, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, as she tried to question the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein. On Tuesday, the two again interjected as she questioned Mr. Sessions over his role as campaign surrogate for President Trump and contact with Russian officials
.. When Ms. Harris then pressed Mr. Sessions on a Justice Department policy he cited as his rationale for not answering questions, Mr. McCain spoke up.
“Chairman,” Mr. McCain said, “the witness should be allowed to answer the question.”
Mr. Burr responded: “Senators will allow the chair to control the hearing. Senator Harris, let him answer.”
.. Here is a partial transcript of Ms. Harris’s exchange with Mr. Sessions.
HARRIS: “Is that policy in writing somewhere?”
SESSIONS: “I think so.”
HARRIS: “So did you not consult it before you came before this committee knowing we would ask you questions about that?”
SESSIONS: “Well, we talked about it. The policy is based …”
HARRIS: “Did you ask that it would be shown to you?”
SESSIONS: “The policy is based on the principle that the president …”
HARRIS: “Sir, I’m not asking about the principle. I am asking, when you knew you would be asked these questions and you would rely on that policy, did you not ask your staff to show you the policy that would be the basis for you refusing to answer the majority of questions that have been asked of you?”
McCAIN: “Chairman, the witness should be allowed to answer the question.”
BURR: “Senators will allow the chair to control the hearing. Senator Harris, let him answer.”
Trump’s lawyer says Comey violated executive privilege. He’s wrong.
The privilege serves as a powerful protection against compelled disclosures of internal, confidential executive branch communications — whether in response to court orders, congressional subpoenas or both.
..Executive privilege is an important shield to protect the president’s power. It is not a sword
.. So where a current or former government employee wants to cooperate and turn over the requested information, the privilege itself won’t — and can’t — stop him or her.
.. Federal law proscribes certain unauthorized disclosures, including of “information relating to the national defense” or information that has pecuniary value to the United States.
.. No one is making an argument that the material in Comey’s memos was classified, or that information about a conversation could have the kind of monetary value required to trigger the federal conversion statute.
.. But it’s also worth stressing that Trump would not have had a valid basis for invoking executive privilege in any event. From his own public statements and tweets about his conversations with Comey, Trump has almost certainly waived any potential privilege claim, since he has acknowledged both the existence and substance of the discussions.
.. And even if the president has not waived the privilege here, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon that “The President’s broad interest in confidentiality of communications will not be vitiated by disclosure of a limited number of conversations preliminarily shown to have some bearing on the pending criminal cases.”
.. none of this means that Comey acted “appropriately” in orchestrating the leak of his memos. Not for the first time, it appears that Comey took it upon himself to breach important norms governing the conduct of senior law enforcement officials