“I see no reason to extend this case any further,” Judge Carl Nichols said at the end of an hours-long hearing in federal court. “While I am certainly aware of Mr. Bannon’s concerns about publicity, in my view the proper mechanism at this time to address that concern is through [jury selection] process,” he added. The decision by Nichols, a Trump appointee confirmed in 2019, capped a devastating series of rulings that will limit Bannon’s defense as he stands trial on two counts of contempt, each of which carries a maximum sentence of up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. . In addition to denying the requested delay, Nichols handed the Justice Department victories on nearly all other pretrial points of disagreement with Bannon. At the House’s request, he rescinded Bannon’s Jan. 6 subpoena seeking records and testimony from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the committee. Nichols also rejected Bannon’s request to raise claims of executive privilege in the trial and limited other defenses, including challenging the composition of the House committee on Jan. 6 and arguments that the Justice Department was going against its own prosecution policies. . The judge had previously ruled that Bannon could not argue that he was relying on the advice of counsel in refusing to sit for questioning or hand over subpoenaed records. “What’s the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses?” Bannon’s defense attorney, David Schoen, asked as the hearing drew to a close. Earlier in the hearing, Schoen noted the number of pending pretrial cases and openly questioned whether he would be able to mount an effective defense without delaying the trial. Nichols appeared to sympathize with this argument. If he had ruled in Bannon’s favor in a way that would have “greatly expanded or complicated” the case, “perhaps all of that would have favored an extension,” Nichols said. “But the moves didn’t happen that way.” Nichols said he would allow Bannon to present evidence about previous subpoenas he received and whether he was aware of deadlines to respond to the Jan. 6 House committee. His decisions came just days after Bannon’s dramatic shift in his stance with the House committee on Jan. 6. After months of stalling, Bannon told a House committee he would finally testify, citing a weekend letter from Donald Trump that said the former president would drop his claims of executive privilege. But the Justice Department, in an overnight court filing, said Monday that Trump’s lawyer Justin Clarke confirmed in an FBI interview that the former president “never invoked executive privilege for any specific information or material.” Federal prosecutors said Bannon’s alleged desire to testify before the House committee should not preempt the trial. In court Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston said Bannon committed his crime last year when he refused to testify or turn over documents and his decision months later to agree to be questioned “has nothing to do with the criminal case.” In overnight court filings, prosecutors said his “last-minute efforts to testify, nearly nine months after his indiscretion — he has yet to make any effort to produce records — are irrelevant to whether he willfully refused to comply in October 2021 with the requirements of the Select Committee. subpoena,” federal prosecutors wrote. His “sudden desire to testify,” prosecutors added, “is not a genuine attempt to fulfill his obligations, but a last-ditch effort to avoid accountability.” Bannon’s defense team first asked for the delay in late June — three weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin July 18 — to avoid a “media blitz” by the House committee on Jan. 6. Arguing that the committee’s hearings had generated an “unprecedented level of prejudicial pretrial publicity,” Bannon’s lawyers suggested the trial could begin no earlier than mid-October. “It would be impossible to guarantee Mr. Bannon a fair trial amid highly publicized Select Committee hearings that purportedly air investigative ‘findings’ on matters raised in the indictment,” Bannon’s defense attorneys wrote. His lawyers highlighted the Jan. 6 House committee hearings that featured Bannon. At the committee’s first hearing on June 9, the panel played footage of Bannon speaking on his podcast on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said. But federal prosecutors pushed back, arguing that the most recent Jan. 6 House committee hearings and their news coverage “have almost nothing to do” with Bannon or the charges against him. In a court filing, prosecutors said Bannon had given the false impression “that all the Committee hearings and the resulting media coverage were about him. “The truth is quite the opposite – the defendant was barely mentioned in the committee hearings or in the resulting media coverage,” prosecutors said. For the Justice Department, Bannon’s case represents the first test of its efforts to prosecute Trump allies accused of snubbing the House committee investigating the Capitol attack and broader efforts to sway the 2020 election. The House voted in October to hold Bannon in contempt and recommend that the Justice Department charge him with contempt of Congress. Within weeks of that vote, a grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt related to his refusal to sit for questioning or turn over documents. In the following months, the House took similar votes to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and two other one-time Trump advisers—Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro—in contempt of Congress. The Justice Department declined to file charges against Meadows and Scavino, who served as the White House’s deputy chief of staff. However, prosecutors secured an indictment against Navarro, who has pleaded not guilty and is due to go to trial in November. Loading Something is loading.
