A federal appeals court denied on Tuesday former President Donald Trump's emergency motion blocking testimony from top aides in Special Counsel Jack Smith's Jan. 6 investigation.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins, and Gregory Katsas ruled Tuesday that top aides for the former president must testify for Smith and a grand jury investigating Trump for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and the handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, Politico reporter Kyle Cheney posted on Twitter.
Trump's legal team filed an emergency motion overnight Monday night to block testimony from top aides including his Director of National Intelligence John Rattcliffe, national security advisor Robert O'Brien, Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, as well as several White House advisors such as Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, CNN reported.
The three-judge panel asked the Department of Justice for a response to the motion, which it received a couple hours later, the report said.
The ruling against Trump comes the same day he is appearing in a Manhattan Criminal Court to be arraigned on an indictment in New York, marking the first time in U.S. history that a current or former president has faced a criminal charge.
According to CNN, Trump's team sought relief from the appeals court maintaining executive privilege to keep the conversations with his aides and advisors private.
CNN reported March 24 that then-Chief Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump's claim for executive privilege in a sealed decision at that time enforcing subpoenas Smith issued in his investigation.
That report said that some of the witnesses appearing before the grand jury refused to answer certain questions relating to their interactions with Trump due to the privilege and are expected to return to answer those questions in light of the new ruling.
A spokesman for Trump said in the report that the Justice Department was "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."
"There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump," the spokesman told CNN at the time. "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."
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