Hope Hicks has been instructed by the White House not to comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena, but the former aide to President Trump has begun turning over some of the requested documents, Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said Tuesday.
The documents she is producing are related to the Trump campaign, according to Nadler, and therefore not necessarily in defiance of the White House’s instruction, which reportedly objected to her production of documents from her time in the administration.
In a Tuesday letter to Nadler, Hicks’ attorney Robert Trout wrote that Hicks would only be able to turn over campaign documents she already had in her possession because the White House and Presidential Transition Team both claimed that documents were under their control, not Hicks’ control.
Nonetheless, Nadler thanked Hicks for “that show of good faith” in a statement Tuesday, that still stressed that, “Federal law makes clear that the documents we requested—documents that left the White House months ago—are no longer covered by executive privilege, if they ever were.”
Additionally, Ann Donaldson — a former aide to ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn who copious notes that played prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — has also been instructed by the White House not to comply with the committee’s document subpoena, Nadler said.
“The President has no lawful basis for preventing these witnesses from complying with our request,” Nadler said. “We will continue to seek reasonable accommodation on these and all our discovery requests and intend to press these issues when we obtain the testimony of both Ms. Hicks and Ms. Donaldson.”
