TE24 International Desk:
WASHINGTON – July 22 (Reuters) – Steve Bannon, a key aide to former President Donald Trump and an influential figure on the US right, has been subpoenaed by a commission investigating last year’s attacks. He was convicted of contempt of Congress for his opposition.
US Capitol, Democratic-led organization wins. The judge prepares testimony or documents for the House Select Commission during its investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, shooting by Trump supporters in an attempt to kill the results of the 2020 presidential election. He found Bannon (68) on two counts of refusal.
Contempt of Congress is punishable by imprisonment of 30 days to 1 year and a fine of $100 to $100,000. U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols set a sentencing date for April 10. 21.
After less than three hours of deliberation, the verdict was reached by a jury of eight men and four women in the House since 1974, when Judge Watergate complicity G. Gordon discovered Liddy. This was the first successful case of defamation. This prompted the resignation of convicted President Richard Nixon.
After Bannon was a top adviser to Republican Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as the White House’s chief strategist in 2017, the two settled the dispute. Bannon also played an important role in the right-wing media. In closing arguments Friday his defense team indicated to the jury that Bannon was a political target and made the prosecution’s main witness a politically motivated Democrat who was connected to a prosecutor. has been identified. His illegal resistance.
Prosecutor Molly Gaston told the jury that the attack was a “dark day” for the United States, “about finding out why it happened on Jan. 6 and preventing it from happening again. Nothing is political.” Jury, “The question is, ‘Why? Why was Steve Bannon chosen?’
The trial lasted for two days. The prosecution examined only two witnesses. The defense did not call. The conviction could strengthen the commission’s position to secure testimony and documents from others close to Trump. Last year, Mr. Trump accused him of politically offending, urged staff not to cooperate with the committee, and some of them fired the committee.
Another former Trump aide, Peter Navarro, was separately indicted in contempt of Congress in June for refusing to testify before the commission. Navarro is scheduled to go on trial in November.
The Justice Department decided not to prosecute two other Trump associates, Mark Meadows and Daniel Scavino, for opposing the commission, despite a House of Representatives vote recommending it. did Unlike Bannon, Meadows has had few contacts with the committee.
Vice-Chairman Liz Cheney, the commission was able to refer several times to the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against Trump.
Adjournment date
Key prosecution witnesses testified that Bannon ignored the September 2021 deadline to respond to the subpoena, did not request an extension and provided an illegal justification for his resistance. It was Christine Amerling. Executive privilege can keep certain communications from the president secret.
The Justice Department indicted Bannon last November after a Democratic-led House moved to impeach him last month. Bannon was separately accused in 2020 of defrauding donors to raise private funds to facilitate Trump’s project to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. Trump pardoned Bannon before the case came to court.
In the 2020 election, pro-Trump mobs stormed the Houses of Parliament, attacking police with batons, sledge hammers, flagpoles, Tasers, chemical stimulants, metal pipes, rocks, metal guard rails and other weapons. Attempts have been made to prevent parliamentary recognition of defeat. Democrat Joe Biden.
Bannon spoke with Trump at least twice the day before the attack and attended a planning meeting at a Washington hotel, the commission said. It played a Bannon clip on his right-wing podcast the day before the attack saying “all hell will break loose tomorrow”.
The judge said one of his lawyers “significantly hampered the defense,” limiting the scope of the case that Bannon’s team could present to the jury. Bannon is barred from claiming he believes his communications with Trump are subject to executive branch privilege and relying on legal advice from lawyers to refuse to pursue him. Claiming to be doing it is forbidden.
Bannon’s defense argued that the subpoena’s duration was flexible and could be negotiated between lawyers and the commission. In an 11th-hour contrast with the impending trial, Bannon announced his intention to testify at a hearing before the commission this month, which prosecutors say did not change the fact that he had already violated the law.
