House committee investigating Jan. 6 could not find Trump aide to serve subpoena

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By Ryan Nobles, Zachary Cohen and Annie Grayer, CNN

More than a week after former Donald Trump aide Dan Scavino was subpoenaed to cooperate in its investigation into the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, the House elite committee investigating the attack was unable to deliver him the subpoena, according to many sources familiar with the effort.

The news came just days before the committee deadline for Scavino and three other close allies of the former President to comply with subpoenas requesting documents on Oct. 7 and a deposit on Oct. 15.

Scavino, Trump’s former White House deputy chief of staff, did not respond to a request for comment by CNN. A source familiar with the situation joked that the committee should have only tweeted the subpoena to the former Trump aide because he had been actively trolling the panel there in recent days.

Other Trump aides who have been subpoenaed include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former adviser Steve Bannon and Kash Patel, a former chief of staff of former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller.

Patel acknowledged that he received the committee’s subpoena. The committee appears to have been successful in their attempt to serve subpoenas to Trump’s other two allies.

In their letter to Scavino, the committee outlines that because of his close and long history of working with the former President, he could provide useful information about the talks Trump had on Jan. 5 about trying to convince the members of Congress not to approve the election, the movements of the former President on Jan. 6, and the broader communication strategy that the White House had in the first place until the Jan. 6 rally.

The committee is also preparing for the possibility that some of Trump’s allies will refuse to comply with the subpoenas. Among the options the panel is weighing to force their cooperation is the threat of holding them in criminal contempt.

At the same time, Trump and those in his orbit who are likely to be considered witnesses to the committee’s investigation offer little indication that they have coalesced around a broader legal approach – if that is some combinations of former presidents seeking executive privilege, resisting subpoenas in an effort to run out of clock or pleading on the 5th.

While Trump threatened more than a month ago to seek the privilege to block the committee’s earlier request for records, many people close to the former president have told CNN in recent days that they don’t know a legal one. that approach that has been taking shape ever since.

CNN has reached out to a dozen lawyers who have represented or advised Trump in the past, but either they did not respond or did not want to be interviewed. One lawyer, John Eastman, would only say that if he represented Trump in this matter, it was a violation of the lawyer-client’s privilege to say so.

Doug Collins, a former congressman, represented Trump on these matters before other committees this summer, but did not respond to CNN’s repeated requests for comment.

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two GOP members serving on the selected panel, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto that the committee will “do everything we can to get them to testify.”

“I mean, there’s civil, there’s criminal referrals that can happen if they refuse, denying a subpoena from congress is a crime. We’re not going out to try to hang it around anyone’s neck. We want those answer, ”he said.

“The problem is when you start to see people resisting, and people sneaking in, you have to look at that and go why are they doing that when they have nothing to hide? We have a lot of people who spontaneously come and talk to us. “We can get to the bottom of it. We want to do it quickly, efficiently and thoroughly,” he added.

-CNN-Wire ™ and © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Paula Reid contributed to this report

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