The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol warned former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark that it will take more aggressive steps to compel his testimony after he refused to answer questions Friday during a closed-door interview with the panel.

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       In a statement released after Clark’s appearance, Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said Clark has “a very short time to reconsider and cooperate fully” before the committee moves to “take strong measures to hold him accountable to meet his obligation.”

       Thompson did not specify what those measures would be, but the committee last month moved to hold Stephen K. Bannon in criminal contempt for failing to cooperate with its subpoena — and has indicated that they are willing to hold others who stonewall the committee in criminal contempt. The House later voted to find Bannon in contempt, referring the decision to the Justice Department, which has yet to announce whether it will prosecute the former White House chief strategist.

       THE ATTACK: The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.

       Clark, who sought to use Justice Department resources to support President Donald Trump’s false claims of massive voting fraud in the 2020 election, was originally scheduled to appear before the committee last week but received a postponement after his lawyer, Robert Driscoll, dropped him as a client.

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       On Friday, Clark declined to answer questions about Trump’s “attempt to use the Department of Justice to overturn the election,” said Thompson, who called his decision “a direct contrast to his supervisors at the Department, who have come in and answered the committee’s questions on these important topics.”

       A person familiar with the legal argument laid out in a letter by Clark’s attorney, Harry MacDougald, confirmed that Clark cited potential executive and attorney-client privilege issues to justify his noncompliance. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. Politico first reported the contents of a 12-page letter from MacDougald, who has previously served as a co-counsel to attorney Sidney Powell during her failed attempts to overturn 2020 election results in certain states.

       “It’s astounding that someone who so recently held a position of public trust to uphold the Constitution would now hide behind vague claims of privilege by a former president, refuse to answer questions about an attack on our democracy, and continue an assault on the rule of law,” Thompson wrote in his statement, rejecting Clark’s claim of privilege.