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A federal court jury has found Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Donald Trump, guilty of contempt for refusing to cooperate with the congressional committee investigating the assault on Capitol Hill.
Bannon, a discreet but very influential adviser, remained in contact with the former Republican president days before the assault on January 6, 2021. To find out what Bannon and Trump talked about those days, the commission summoned him to testify and present documents. However, he refused, citing the right of presidents to keep some of their conversations secret. This rejection caused him to be accused of “obstructing” the work of Congress.
A jury in a federal court in Washington deliberated for less than three hours and found Bannon guilty on both counts. He faces one month and one year in prison for each charge. The 68-year-old former adviser, a figure of right-wing populism in the United States and director of Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, will hear the sentence in October.
“We may have lost a battle today, but we will not lose the war,” Bannon told reporters after the verdict was delivered. “I support Trump and the Constitution.”
“I’m going to fight to the end,” he added a few hours later on Fox News. “We have a long appeal process” ahead of us. “I think the law is with us on many points.”
The former political adviser also called on viewers to defeat Democrats in the November legislative elections so that a Republican-dominated Congress opens its own commission of inquiry into the assault on Capitol Hill.
silent defense
The chairman of the House investigative committee on the Capitol storming, Bennie Thompson, and his vice chair, Republican Liz Cheney, called it a “victory for the rule of law.”
“Just as all those responsible for the events of January 6 must be held accountable, anyone who obstructs our investigation into these events must bear the consequences,” they add in a statement.
At the opening of the debates on Tuesday, prosecutor Amanda Vaughn accused Steve Bannon of believing himself “above the law.” Bannon “ignored the compliance orders, even after Congress rejected his pretexts” and warned that he would be prosecuted if he did not attend the subpoena, Vaughn added.
According to her, the commission had reason to think that he, like other collaborators of the president, could have information about the links between Donald Trump and his supporters who stormed the Capitol while congressmen certified the presidential victory of Democrat Joe Biden.
The defense did not present witnesses at the trial, which began Monday with jury selection, and Steve Bannon did not speak in his defense. His lawyer, Evan Corcoran, denounced political persecution, assuring that “no one ignored the call to appear” and that the date had even been negotiated.
As the trial approached, Bannon agreed to cooperate with the congressmen. But the prosecution denounced “a last minute attempt to avoid accountability” and the judge in charge of the case decided to keep the trial.
Steve Bannon is closely linked to the ideology of the extreme right and promoted it when Trump arrived at the White House in 2017. He previously directed the controversial Breitbart news site, an “alt-right” platform, a movement associated with conspiracy theses and integrated by militants convinced of the superiority of the white race.
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