Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a suite of other aides are being forced to testify before a grand jury hearing evidence in the Justice Department’s investigation into Jan. 6, rejecting former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

The decision, first reported by ABC News, came in a sealed ruling last week from D.C. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, one of her last before stepping down as chief judge.

The order requires testimony from a number of Trump aides, including some that have already appeared before the grand jury but declined to answer questions about their conversations with the former president.

The decision is a turning point for Meadows, who dodged a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee while the panel’s work identified him as a key player in a suite of different efforts to keep Trump in office after losing the 2020 election. DOJ declined to prosecute Meadows for contempt of Congress, but special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed him in February in connection with his criminal probe.

Trump communications guru Dan Scavino, who DOJ likewise declined to prosecute after he bucked a committee subpoena, was also included in Howell’s order and must testify in the criminal probe.

Aide Stephen Miller, former DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien were also all directed to testify, as were John McEntee, then director of the Presidential Personnel Office, and Nick Luna, an assistant to Trump. 

Trump’s team can appeal the decision, though a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld another Howell order, one that directed Trump’s attorney in the Mar-a-Lago probe to answer questions about his conversations with the former president.

“The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege,” a Trump spokesman said in a statement.

“There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle.”