Federal investigators questioned Justin Clark, counsel for Donald Trump, two weeks ago, according to the Justice Department.
According to a court document relating to Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt case, DOJ prosecutors began investigating the lawyer on June 29.
The trial for Bannon, a former White House strategist, for violating a subpoena from the January 6 select committee, begins on Monday.
The decision to interview Clark may have broader effects on the several investigations that Trump and his inner circle are currently facing.
Bannon was one of many witnesses called to discuss the assault on the Capitol last year that was intended to shut down Congress in response to former President Donald Trump’s unfounded assertions that Joe Biden won the 2020 election as a result of voting fraud.
Investigators think Bannon and other Trump advisors may know something about connections between the White House and the mob that broke into the Capitol on the day that Biden was supposed to be declared the victor.
Bannon’s lawyers had previously asserted that he was shielded by presidential executive privilege and did not have to comply with the committee, despite the fact that he was not a member of the White House staff nor an official Trump assistant.
But now, the former chairman of Breitbart says he is prepared to testify at the hearings.
Trump has now signed a letter supporting the decision and claimed to ‘waive’ the executive privilege over the testimony.
But Assistant US Attorney Amanda Vaughn said Clark told the DOJ in June that Trump had never invoked executive privilege to stop Bannon.
She wrote, according to Politico: ‘The Defendant’s timing suggests that the only thing that has really changed since he refused to comply with the subpoena in October 2021 is that he is finally about to face the consequences of his decision to default.
‘All of the above-described circumstances suggest the Defendant’s sudden wish to testify is not a genuine effort to meet his obligations but a last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability.’
According to Vaughn, Clark refuted a number of the assertions made by Bannon and his legal team that correspondence with Clark served as the foundation for their assertions of executive privilege.
However, Vaughn informed the DOJ that “the former President never invoked executive privilege over any specific information or materials; that the former President’s counsel never requested or was requested to attend the defendant’s deposition before the Select Committee; that the defendant’s attorney misrepresented to the Committee what the former President’s counsel had told the defendant’s attorney; and that the former president’s counsel made it clear to the defendant’s attorney that the executive privilege did not apply to any specific information or materials.”
The DOJ provided Bannon’s team with a report summarizing Clark’s statements the day following his interview.
It is unknown if he was asked specifically about Bannon or other Trump-related topics during the interview.