During Donald Trump’s presidency, administration officials were able to dodge congressional subpoenas by hiding behind “executive privilege.” However, those excuses are no longer valid now that Trump is out of office, and they have no way to escape the Capitol riot probe, according to former House impeachment counsel Norm Eisen.
Speaking on CNN on Monday, Eisen said that any efforts by former Trump administration officials to stonewall the House select committee on the January 6 Capitol attack will hit a brick wall in the courts.
“Norm, there’s plenty of ways … that this could just get bogged down in litigation,” said anchor Anderson Cooper. “There’s, you know — they could issue subpoenas and people could refuse to show up and cite executive privilege, couldn’t they?”
“CNN’s reporting is that the committee is starting with reputable actors, the telecommunications companies, social media companies, they’re not going to play those games,” said Eisen. “Congress has just re-established its right to enforce subpoenas in the Trump litigation in the Supreme Court, in the McGahn litigation that we worked on in the first impeachment in the D.C. Circuit.”
He added that courts won’t tolerate “game-playing” from subpoenaed Trump officials
“If it goes to court, I think it could move more quickly,” Eisen said. “The courts are not going to tolerate the kind of game-playing that we saw from Donald Trump.”
Watch the interview below via CNN.
