WASHINGTON (AP) – Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of Steve Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump who faces charges of criminal contempt in Congress after refusing for months to cooperate with the House committee investigating on January 19th. 6, 2021, Capitol Insurrection.
Bannon is charged in Washington federal court with defying a Jan. 6 committee summons that asked for his records and testimony. He was charged in November with two counts of criminal contempt in Congress, a month after the Justice Department received a referral from Congress. Each count carries a minimum of 30 days in jail and up to one year behind bars.
The trial has been an intense activity in the case since July 9. More than a week ago, the former White House strategist notified the committee that he is now ready to testify. His attorney, Robert Costello, said the change was because Trump has waived his demand for executive privilege to prevent testimony.
Bannon, 68, had been one of Trump’s most prominent allies in refusing to testify before the committee. He has argued that his testimony is protected by Trump’s claim for executive privileges.
Trump has repeatedly claimed the privilege of the executive, even as a former president, to try to block the testimony of witnesses and the publication of White House documents. The Supreme Court ruled in January against Trump’s efforts to prevent the National Archives from cooperating with the committee after a lower court judge noted, in part, that “presidents are not kings.”
The committee has also noted that Trump fired Bannon from the White House in 2017, and therefore Bannon was a private citizen when he consulted with the then president in the run-up to the riot.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols dismissed motions to delay the trial in separate hearings last week, including Thursday when Bannon’s attorneys expressed concern over a CNN report that has since been issued on his client and what they said were harmful comments made during a hearing last week by the House commission investigating the riots.
“I am aware of the current concerns about advertising and bias and if we can sit a jury that will be appropriate and fair, but as I said before, I think the right way is to go through the process of seeing,” Nichols said. Thursday, referring to the individual interrogation of the jurors before they were selected. The judge said he intended to get a jury that “would be appropriate, fair and impartial.”
Although the judge allowed the trial to proceed, Nichols left open the possibility that letters about Trump relinquishing his privilege and Bannon’s offer to cooperate with the committee could refer to the trial, saying the information was “at least potentially relevant” to Bannon’s defense. .
Roscoe Howard Jr., the former U.S. attorney in Washington, DC, said the best case for Bannon is if information about his offer of cooperation reaches the jury. Even if he does, claiming that executive privilege prevented him from cooperating earlier will be a difficult argument to make because Bannon refused to respond to the subpoena, Howard said.
“You have to come forward to invoke the privilege claim. You can’t call by phone,” he said.