WASHINGTON
— Sam Nunberg, a onetime Trump campaign aide who recently met with
investigators for the special counsel, said on Monday that he was
subpoenaed to go before a grand jury on Friday but that he was unlikely
to appear or to provide documents he was ordered to hand over.
He
indicated he did not know what the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller
III, was seeking by ordering him to appear before the grand jury and to
turn over a number of documents. There was no way to authenticate the
subpoena; Mr. Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Part of the subpoena document,
which Mr. Nunberg provided to The New York Times, is dated Feb. 27 and
makes no mention of requiring him to appear before the grand jury. It
calls only for him to preserve documents from Nov. 1, 2015, through the
present related to several people connected to the Trump campaign. They
include President Trump; the departing White House communications
director, Hope Hicks; the former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski;
Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist; Mr. Trump’s
longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller; the former Trump Organization lawyer
Michael Cohen; and Mr. Nunberg’s mentor, Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime
confidant of Mr. Trump’s.
“They have
requested a ridiculous amount of documents,” Mr. Nunberg said. “Should I
spend 30 hours producing these? I don’t know what they have. They may
very well have something on the president. But they are unfairly
targeting Roger Stone.”
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The
subpoena also demands any documents related to Carter Page, a former
Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who was secretly surveilled by the
Justice Department as part of the Russia investigation, as well as Paul
Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, and his deputy, Rick
Gates. Mr. Manafort has been indicted on a string of money laundering
and fraud charges, and Mr. Gates recently pleaded guilty and agreed to
cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s investigators.
The
list of people from whom Mr. Mueller is seeking information from Mr.
Nunberg raises questions about his target, as does the time frame. Mr.
Nunberg was fired by Mr. Trump during the summer of 2015 and thus was
gone from the campaign in November. And he and Mr. Lewandowski are known
to be combatants.
Still,
Mr. Nunberg — whose mentor, Mr. Stone, goes by the motto that all press
is good press — spent hours on Monday engaged in a media tour with The
Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC, describing his plans to flout the subpoena and professing his lack of concern about what could happen to him.
“I
was fired within six weeks” of the campaign’s start, Mr. Nunberg told
The Times, despite having “saved” Mr. Trump during a fight with Senator
John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that summer after Mr. Trump’s remark
that Mr. McCain was not a war hero because he was captured in Vietnam.
Mr. McCain was shot down during the war and imprisoned for more than
five years in Hanoi, refusing early release even after being beaten
repeatedly.
Mr. Nunberg added that the president often sounded “like a moron, but this whole thing is a witch hunt.”
Mr.
Nunberg said he anticipated his lawyer, Patrick J. Brackley, would fire
him for speaking publicly. Mr. Brackley did not immediately respond to
an email asking whether that was the case.
Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, declined to discuss
Mr. Nunberg’s subpoena, noting that he has not worked in the White
House.
Mr. Nunberg could avoid
appearing before the grand jury if his lawyer sent prosecutors a letter
asserting his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself. If that
does not happen, Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors could ask a judge for a
bench warrant for Mr. Nunberg’s arrest.
Mr.
Nunberg has spoken with the Senate Intelligence Committee in its own
investigation into Russian election meddling, according to a person
familiar with the matter. He has not spoken with the House Intelligence
Committee, according to three of its members. Its own examination of
Moscow interference has languished amid partisan infighting.
Mr.
Stone, the self-described political dirty trickster who is Mr. Trump’s
longest-serving political adviser, was not on the campaign formally.
Both Mr. Mueller’s office and congressional investigators have been
examining whether he was in contact with Julian Assange, a founder of
WikiLeaks, about hacked emails from an account belonging to Hillary
Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, that
were posted on the website.
Mr. Stone, asked for comment, said he was not surprised that his information was being sought.
“I
was part of the Trump campaign, have been the president’s friend and
adviser for decades, and would expect that Mueller’s team would ask for
any documents or emails sent or written by me,” Mr. Stone said in a text
message. “But let me reiterate, I have no knowledge or involvement in
Russian collusion or any other inappropriate act.”
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Trump Aide Says He Will Refuse to Go Before Grand Jury. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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