Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg says he has now turned over everything to Robert Mueller just days after promising to defy a subpoena from the special counsel.
Nunberg went on a wild media blitz earlier this week when he insisted he would not cooperate with Mueller’s Russia probe and even threw down the challenge to ‘arrest me’.
He later backtracked on the comments and will now appear before a federal grand jury on Friday.
‘I’m not holding anything back,’ Nunberg said in an interview with WABC Radio on Wednesday. ‘(Complying with the subpoena) was much easier to do than I initially thought.’
Former Trump campaign aide is photographed leaving CNN’s headquarters in New York City Monday night after appearing on Out Front with broadcaster Erin Burnett
Nunberg said he had given Mueller’s investigators copies of requested communications, including texts and emails with 10 campaign associates.
He said he met the Wednesday night deadline imposed by the subpoena.
‘I’m not going to take the fifth on anything, because I don’t need to take the fifth on anything,’ Nunberg said.
‘I’m not going to give them the excuse to throw me into jail because I won’t respond to a question… I’m going to answer every single question.’
Nunberg also insisted he wasn’t drunk during a series of car crash interviews when he threatened to defy the subpoena.
It comes after he revealed he was considering alcohol abuse treatment after attacking everyone from Mueller to the president himself on Monday night.
‘I’m a little worried about me,’ Nunberg told the New York Daily News, before promising to reveal more ‘next week’.
Sam Nunberg is seen leaving CNN’s New York studios after a marathon day of interviews in which he said he would not cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe
Nunberg said on Wednesday that he had given Mueller’s investigators copies of requested communications, including texts and emails with 10 campaign associates
‘I got carried away,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to just get this over with.’
‘I made my point, I got my venting out. Let me just give them what they want because there’s nothing there anyway.’
Nunberg repeatedly complained during the interviews that he had been asked to comb through emails to top campaign officials for Mueller’s probe.
‘They wanted every email I had with Roger Stone and with Steve Bannon,’ he said, referencing longtime informal adviser Stone and Trump’s former chief White House strategist.
‘Why should I hand them e-mails from November 1, 2015?’ Nunberg added, revealing the timeline Mueller imposed.
‘I’m not going to cooperate when they want me to have – when they want me to come in to a grand jury, for them to insinuate that Roger Stone was colluding with Julian Assange. Roger is my mentor. Roger is like family to me. I’m not going to do it.’
Nunberg’s defiance could have led to contempt of court charges or jail time, but the former aide said multiple times that he doubted he would ever be sent to prison.
President Trump’s ex-political aide Sam Nunberg went on a media blitz yesterday suggesting he planned to ignore Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s subpoena to have him testify before a grand jury
Sam Nunberg (pictured) later changed his tune and suggested he would comply with the subpoena, but not before he attacked the White House Press Secretary and suggested that Trump associate Carter Page had ‘colluded’ with the Russians
But now, Nunberg said he will ‘tell the truth’ when he appears before Mueller’s grand jury on Friday.
Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino confirmed Trump’s former aide will cooperate with Mueller and then ‘seek treatment for what ails him’.
Gasparino, who described Nunberg as a ‘friend’, said he believes ‘drinking…is a big part of it and that’s what happened [Monday]’.
The news will come as little surprise to many who had been following Nunberg’s outbursts, which even prompted CNN’s Erin Burnett to tell the aide on live television that she could smell alcohol on his breath.
Nunberg denied that he had been drinking and, even after admitting he may seek treatment, has still not confirmed whether he was drunk during the interviews.
But the former communications adviser seemed to hint that he has been troubled since getting fired from Trump’s campaign in August 2015 for racially-charged Facebook posts.
One of the most eyebrow raising interviews of Sam Nunberg’s (left) media blitz happened on the CNN show Erin Burnett (right) Out Front
NOT DRUNK: While CNN’s Erin Burnett (right) confronted Sam Nunberg (left) and said she could smell alcohol on his breath, the former Trump aide said he hadn’t had a drink on Monday
‘I was very close to Donald Trump,’ Nunberg told New York Daily News.
‘I was heavily invested in that campaign. I wasn’t very good after getting fired.’
And it seems those old wounds have hardly healed, as Nunberg told MSNBC’s Katy Tur he was ‘not a fan’ of Trump.
‘He treated Roger and me very badly and he screwed us over during the campaign,’ Nunberg said.
And while Nunberg said he doesn’t believe Trump colluded with the Russians, he does believe the president may indeed have ‘done something’.
‘I think he may have done something during the election. But I don’t know that for sure,’ he told Tur.
Watch: Ex-Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg says he’s refusing comply with Mueller subpoena:
“I’m not going to cooperate when they want me to come into a grand jury for them to insinuate that Roger Stone was colluding with Julian Assange. Roger is my mentor. Roger is like family.” pic.twitter.com/jUtBCPNiDe
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 5, 2018
Investigators are also interested in longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone’s communications with WikiLeaks and his role advising Trump
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators have been asking witnesses whether Donald Trump knew about the theft of Democratic emails that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign
When pressed, Nunberg only said: ‘I can’t explain it unless you were in there.’
Nunberg also revisited the issue of whether Mueller has obtained information that Trump did something wrong.
‘They know something on him,’ Nunberg told Jake Tapper. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong, but he did something.’
Even as he trashed the request for his information, Nunberg said Mueller was an honorable man – and slammed Trump for hosting Russia’s former ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office.
‘I shouldn’t have to go back down to a grand jury. I’m spending a lot of money on legal fees. A lot of other people are. And granted, because [Trump] decided to give an interview to Lester Holt the day after he fired James Comey, and then he decided to have the Russians in the Oval Office. You’ll have to explain that one to me. I’ll never understand it,’ he said.
Nunberg also said he believed former foreign policy adviser Carter Page ‘colluded with the Russians’, but said he was just a minor figure in the campaign and is a ‘weird dude’ and a ‘scumbag.’
The former aide also said he spoke to Bannon, who recently met with Mueller’s team.
‘By the way, Steve Bannon – I spoke to Steve Bannon for the first time last week after I went in there and…Steve and I were discussing about how we both feel, Katy, like I’m telling you, that Trump may have very well done something during the election. I don’t know what it is. I could be wrong by the way,’ Nunberg said.
In between his complaints, Nunberg revealed the extent of Mueller’s inquiries, which ranged from all communications he had with Trump’s former campaign manager, press secretary, and Page, who Nunberg said he considered to be a ‘moron.’
‘They asked for communications with Carter Page. Are you giving me a break? Do you think I would ever talk to that moron?’ Nunberg told CNN.
Nunberg’s comments seem to comport with an Axios report from Sunday that revealed all the email communications Mueller was seeking from an unnamed official.
It contained the same names of people as subjects of communications that were of interest.
Judges are not known to recognize the personal preferences of witnesses in deciding if they must appear, nor the inconvenience – however substantial – of complying.