As Donald Trump may still yet dodge state-level indictments from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis's Georgia election fraud case is facing obliteration from the Georgia GOP, Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal case got a huge boost on Friday.
A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege and has ordered Mark Meadows and other former top aides to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the election leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, was subpoenaed along with the other former aides by Special counsel Jack Smith for testimony and documents related to the probe.
Trump's legal team had challenged the subpoenas by asserting executive privilege, which is the right of a president to keep confidential the communications he has with advisers.
In a sealed order last week, Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege for Meadows and a number of others, including Trump's former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, his former national security adviser Robert O'Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, and former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee, along with former top DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, were also included in the order, the sources said.
Trump is likely to appeal the ruling, according to sources briefed on the matter.
"The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege," a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. "There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle."
Meadows did not respond to ABC's request for comment and neither did an attorney representing him. Ratcliffe, O'Brien, Miller, Luna, McEntee and Cuccinelli did not respond to ABC's request for comment. An attorney representing Scavino also did not respond.
For now, expect the testimony of Trump's inner circle to be blocked as the appeal runs it course. Such an appeals process could take months or years however, and the odds of Smith being forced to abandon the testimony under DoJ non-interference directives will increase as Trump's legal camp gums up the works. On the other hand, there are plenty of other witnesses, lawyers, and non-executive figures that will be forced to testify in the days and weeks ahead.
We'll see.
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