The trial featured two days of testimony. Prosecutors questioned solely two witnesses. The defence known as none.
The conviction could strengthen the committee’s place because it seeks to safe testimony and paperwork from others in Trump’s orbit. Trump final yr requested his associates to not cooperate with the committee, accusing it of attempting to harm him politically, and several other of them rebuffed the panel.
Rioters stand outdoors the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.Credit score:AP
One other former Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, was individually charged with contempt of Congress in June for refusing to look for a committee deposition. Navarro’s trial is scheduled for November.
The Justice Division opted to not cost two different Trump associates, Mark Meadows and Daniel Scavino, for defying the committee regardless of a Home vote recommending it. In contrast to Bannon, Meadows turned over some communications to the committee.
The committee may make a number of referrals to the Justice Division in search of prison prices in opposition to Trump himself, based on its vice chair Liz Cheney.
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The primary prosecution witness was Kristin Amerling, a high committee staffer who testified that Bannon spurned deadlines to answer the September 2021 subpoena, sought no extensions and provided an invalid rationale for his defiance – a declare by Trump involving a authorized doctrine known as govt privilege that may preserve sure presidential communications confidential.
The Justice Division charged Bannon final November after the Democratic-led Home voted the prior month to carry him in contempt. Bannon individually was charged in 2020 with defrauding donors to a non-public fundraising effort to spice up Trump’s mission to construct a wall alongside the US-Mexican border. Trump pardoned Bannon earlier than that case went to trial.
A professional-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and attacked police with batons, sledgehammers, flag poles, Taser units, chemical irritants, steel pipes, rocks, steel guard rails and different weapons in a failed effort to dam congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The committee has mentioned Bannon spoke with Trump at the very least twice on the day earlier than the assault and attended a planning assembly at a Washington lodge. It performed a clip of Bannon saying on his right-wing podcast the day earlier than the assault that “all hell goes to interrupt free tomorrow.”
The decide restricted the scope of the case Bannon’s staff may current to jurors, strikes one in every of his legal professionals mentioned “badly stymied” the defence. Bannon was barred from arguing that he believed his communications with Trump had been topic to govt privilege and was prohibited from arguing he relied on authorized recommendation from an legal professional in refusing to conform.
Bannon’s defence argued that he believed the subpoena deadlines had been versatile and topic to negotiation between his legal professional and the committee. In an Eleventh-hour reversal with the trial looming, Bannon this month introduced a willingness to testify in a public listening to earlier than the committee, a proposal that prosecutors mentioned didn’t change the actual fact he had already damaged the regulation.
Reuters
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