Steve Bannon, former senior strategist to President Donald Trump , arrives at a House Intelligence Committee closed door meeting, on Jan. 16. His visit lasted more than 10 hours. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Bannon subpoenaed by House intelligence panel, but will he show?

Steve Bannon’s return to the House Intelligence Committee under subpoena is expected on Tuesday, reviving a bipartisan clash that flared last month when the former senior strategist to President Donald Trump refused to answer lawmakers’ questions.

His previous visit to the committee lasted more than 10 hours, and senior lawmakers in both parties said afterward that Bannon, the former executive chairman of the far-right Breitbart News, declared he would not answer questions about his time in the White House — or serving on Trump’s presidential transition team.


Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, the top Republican in the intelligence panel’s Russia investigation, said on Monday evening that he was “not aware of any executive privilege” being invoked to allow Bannon to sidestep questions about his conversations with Trump.

“We have a subpoena for him in the morning and we expect it to be complied with,” Conaway told reporters. “We have questions that are unanswered that we want answered on both sides.”

Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), another House intelligence panel member, declined to predict that Bannon would heed the committee’s subpoena. But he suggested that lawmakers should use their power to hold him responsible if he didn’t.

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“Our subpoenas have to matter,” Rooney told reporters on Monday evening. “And if we have a subpoena out there that’s being ignored and we don’t do anything about it, guess what: Nobody’s going to come down to [the committee] anymore and answer questions.”

Rooney recalled that Bannon, during his appearance in the House last month, suggested that executive privilege might cover his time on the transition before Trump formally took office. That assertion “stopped this last time,” Rooney said.

Asked how the committee would respond if Bannon did not show up on Tuesday, Conaway demurred on a possible contempt finding. Lawmakers have “all the tools that the House has to enforce subpoenas, and we’ll take the steps necessary,” he told reporters.

“But again, I expect him to be here, expect him to answer the questions, and [we’ll] go from there,” Conaway said.

Among the options available if Bannon continues to refuse to comply with the committee’s subpoena is a contempt finding against him. Some House Republicans had threatened to hold senior Justice Department officials in contempt over the course of their investigation into alleged misconduct by law enforcement in their probe of Russian election meddling, including the role of Trump’s allies.

Bannon’s attorney offered no comment on the subpoena requiring his client’s appearance.

