Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman said Thursday that the White House would have no grounds to limit testimony from former chief strategist Stephen Bannon regarding events that took place during the presidential transition, stating that there’s no such thing as “presidential-elect privilege.”
Ackerman responded on MSNBC to reports that President Trump personally instructed Bannon to limit his testimony during an interview with the House Intelligence Committee this week after Bannon refused to answer questions about events that occurred after the Trump campaign concluded.
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“First of all, executive privilege does not apply to Donald Trump until Jan. 20, 2017, when he was sworn in as president,” Ackerman said.
“There’s no such thing as president-elect privilege,” he added. “It’s like saying there’s attorney-client privilege when someone’s in law school and they’re not an attorney.”
Ackerman added that there are “lots” of questions that Bannon should answer about his work on the campaign and the transition team.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” he added. “There’s lots of material to question Steve Bannon on prior to Jan. 20. That’s the time period, for example, when Michael Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador and lied to the FBI about sanctions.”
“So yeah, I’m extremely skeptical here,” he said. “To me, it all looks like a cover-up.”
Bannon drew ire from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee this week after he refused to answer questions about his work on the transition team or in the first months of the Trump administration.
Sources described the meeting as a “total free-for-all” and “brutal.”
“He doesn’t have any friends in that room,” one source told The Hill this week.
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who took over the committee’s Russia probe last year after the recusal of committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), said Tuesday that Bannon would not be able to assert executive privilege.
“This witness is not an executive,” Conaway told reporters. “He’s not in a position to be able to do that.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the panel’s top Democrat, told reporters that Bannon’s counsel conferred with the White House after the committee issued a subpoena for Bannon’s testimony.
Schiff said Bannon “was instructed by the White House to refuse again to answer any questions concerning the time during the transition and his time in the administration.”
“The scope of this assertion of privilege — if that’s what it is — is breathtaking,” Schiff said. “It goes well beyond anything we’ve seen in this investigation. … This was effectively a gag order by the White House.”
The White House has denied any attempts to instruct Bannon before his testimony and said he has only had limited contact with the administration since his ouster last year.