WASHINGTON (AP) – United States (US) President Joe Biden denied executive privilege claims made by former Trump administration officials Peter Navarro and Michael Flynn in connection to the congressional probe into the attack on the US Capitol.
In letters penned by White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su, the Biden administration rejected the shield of executive privilege purported by Navarro and Flynn in response to recent subpoenas by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack.
“President Biden has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the national interest, and therefore is not justified, with respect to particular subjects within the purview of the select committee,” Su wrote in the letters sent to Navarro and to Flynn’s lawyer.
Navarro, who served as Donald Trump’s trade adviser, and Flynn, who was his first national security adviser, join the list of many in the former president’s orbit who have claimed executive privilege in order to delay or avoid cooperating with the nine-member panel’s investigation – often at the behest of Trump. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows defied his own subpoena from the committee as he and Trump have escalated their legal battles to withhold documents and testimony about the insurrection.
Steve Bannon has also claimed the privilege, raising the novel legal question of whether or how far a claim of executive privilege may extend to communications between a president and an informal adviser outside the government.
