WASHINGTON — White House officials directed Kellyanne Conway on Monday not to comply with a congressional subpoena compelling her to answer to accusations of multiple violations of a federal ethics law, invoking the “longstanding principle of immunity for senior advisers to the president.”
The House Oversight and Reform Committee authorized a subpoena for Ms. Conway last month after Henry J. Kerner, a special counsel for a nonpartisan government watchdog agency, told the committee that Ms. Conway should be fired from the White House for her “egregious, repeated and very public violations” of a federal ethics law called the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities at work.
But President Trump has vowed to defy all subpoenas, and on Monday, when Ms. Conway was due to testify, Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, told Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the chairman of the oversight panel, in a letter that she would ignore the summons. Invoking the claim of absolute immunity, Mr. Cipollone wrote that “in accordance with longstanding, bipartisan precedent, Ms. Conway cannot be compelled to testify before Congress with respect to matters related to her service as a senior adviser to the president.”
The move is the latest turn in a growing confrontation between the House and the executive branch, as they battle over just how far Congress’s oversight power extends and whether a president’s senior aides are “absolutely immune” from subpoenas. The White House has blocked testimony from a number of the president’s top aides, current and former, invoking that claim.
In response, Mr. Cummings threatened to hold Ms. Conway in contempt if she does not comply by next week. The House is scheduled to hold William P. Barr, the attorney general, and Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, in criminal contempt on Tuesday for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas related to the decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
“We are not requiring her to testify about advice she gave the president or about the White House’s policy decisions,” Mr. Cummings said. “We are requiring her to testify before Congress about her multiple violations of federal law, her waste of taxpayer funds and her actions that compromise public confidence in the integrity of the federal government.”
Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, described the subpoena in a statement on Monday as part of House Democrats’ “purely political campaign to harass the president and his close advisers.”
“Democrats continue to overreach and politicize the Office of Special Counsel — this time, by trying to silence Kellyanne Conway with ill-founded, phony allegations about the Hatch Act,” Ms. Grisham said.
But government ethics groups condemned the White House’s refusal to comply with the subpoena.
“No one is above the law, even if they work in the White House,” said Liz Hempowicz, the director of public policy at the Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “Ms. Conway must be held to the same standard as all federal employees governed by the Hatch Act.”
The Hatch Act is meant to ensure that government employees avoid the appearance of partisanship and do not use their official authority to influence the results of an election. The special counsel’s office, led by Mr. Kerner, accused Ms. Conway of being a “repeat offender” of the law, citing multiple official interviews she gave in her capacity as a White House spokeswoman in which she attacked Democratic presidential candidates unprovoked.
Absolute immunity, the claim invoked by the White House, is separate from the concept of executive privilege. The Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations has taken the position that the president’s closest advisers have such immunity from congressional subpoenas so they cannot be forced to comply with demands for testimony. But the theory has not been fully upheld in court, and Democrats believe it is unlikely to stand up when tested.