Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief White House strategist, speaks to the media after the first day of his trial on congressional contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with the US House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in the US District Court in Washington July 18, 2022.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters
Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to Trump, is due to be indicted Friday for defying a subpoena from a congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.
The suit, set at 9 a.m. ET in US District Court in Washington, D.C., could make it one of the most prominent figures to be imprisoned on rebellion-related charges. He is expected to appeal his conviction.
Federal prosecutors want the court to sentence Bannon to six months in prison — the maximum of the set of federal sentencing guidelines — and a maximum fine of $200,000.
Prosecutors said Bannon, a right-wing media figure and close ally of former President Donald Trump, “consistently acted in bad faith” while trying to obstruct the House select committee’s investigation.
Bannon asked federal judge Carl Nichols to issue a probation sentence. His lawyers also argued that the court should defer any ruling until the appeals court could consider the case.
Bannon’s ruling came one year after the day the House of Representatives voted to charge him with contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from a House Select Committee on Documents and Testimonies. Bannon was charged with two criminal charges in November and convicted after a federal trial in July.
Bannon’s attorney argued that the subpoena violated Trump’s executive prerogative, the presidential authority to withhold certain information from the public.
But Bannon reversed course days before his trial, saying he was willing to testify because Trump agreed to waive his claim to executive privilege.
Prosecutors described it as a stunt. In Monday’s court filing, they wrote that after Bannon’s gambit failed to delay the trial, he “made no further attempt to comply with the subpoena — continuing to this day.”
Bannon’s lawyers argued in part that Bannon should receive a reduced sentence because he was only following his attorney’s advice when he defied the Select Committee’s subpoena.
“The facts of this case show that Mr Bannon’s conduct was based on his good faith reliance on the advice of his attorney,” the defendant’s lawyers wrote in a court filing this week.
But Justice Department prosecutors said Bannon “followed a bad faith strategy of defiance and contempt” from “the moment” he received the subpoena.
“No one can show greater contempt than the defendant did in defying the subpoena,” they told the court.
“The rioters who engulfed the Capitol on January 6 not only attacked a building — they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country is built and by which it continues. It stated in their memo.
This is the development of the news. . Please check back for updates
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
No comments:
Post a Comment