Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images Former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon again asked a federal judge to delay his upcoming trial on criminal contempt charges, this time citing repeated references to some of his past comments during a hearing on Tuesday. of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol riot. Bannon’s lawyers also said in court Wednesday that “the defense only learned today” that CNN will air an hour-long documentary about Bannon on Sunday night, the day before his contempt of Congress trial begins in Washington, DC. Defense attorneys said both facts create “the very serious risk of prejudice here” against Bannon among jurors to be selected for his trial on charges of willful refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the House committee on the 6 January requesting documents and his deposition.
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Read more about CNBC’s political coverage: “There is nothing magical about July 18 [the trial’s scheduled start date] that may possibly justify jeopardizing Mr. Bannon’s fundamental constitutional rights to a fair trial, the lawyers wrote to Judge Carl Nichols. They asked the judge to adjourn the trial until after October 15. Nichols on Monday rejected an earlier motion by Bannon to delay the contempt trial for three months after his lawyers argued that media coverage of the House hearings would undermine his right to a fair trial. Nichols on the same day also said Bannon could not argue at trial that he did not comply with the subpoena because of executive privilege and barred him from calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the January 6 committee as witnesses. The judge’s rulings effectively destroyed much of Bannon’s potential defense and led one of his lawyers to protest in court: “What’s the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses?” Bannon, who served just seven months as Trump’s top White House adviser, faces at least 30 days in jail if convicted of the two contempt charges he faces. In their court filing Wednesday to renew their request to delay the trial, Bannon’s lawyers said lawmakers at Tuesday’s House committee hearing were shown video clips of him speaking on his podcast on Jan. 5, 2021, which had “ processed for maximum inflammatory effect’. “All hell will break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said in this video. “Everything is converging and now we are, as they say, at the point of attack. Right? The point of attack tomorrow. I’ll tell you this, it’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to. Okay? it’s going to be very unusually different. And the only thing that all I can say is put a strap on.” Later that night, a committee member said Bannon and then-President Donald Trump spoke on the phone for six minutes. The next day, thousands of Trump supporters rioted outside and inside Capitol Hill, delaying for hours the certification of President Joe Biden’s House victory by a joint session of Congress. Bannon’s defense testimony Wednesday also included the CNN special scheduled to air Sunday, titled “Divided We Fall.” “The Special Report on Mr. Bannon, which aired on the eve of the trial, is being widely promoted with a trailer and special announcements from key CNN anchors,” the filing said. A CNN trailer for the special shows Bannon saying, “We will govern for 100 years,” the filing noted. A narrator then says in the trailer, “In rare interviews, CNN investigates the man and his master plan,” and a video clip shows former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale saying, “Bannon calls the shots “. Bannon’s lawyers wrote: “The teaser uses the term ‘Master Plan’ to describe Mr. Bannon’s alleged machinations, with a clear deliberate reference to that familiar weighted term referring to the most diabolical plot in history.” This sentence ends with a footnote in a description of a book titled “Hitler’s Plan, 1933-1945,” which the publisher’s description detailed as “Hitler’s unrealized vision of a Europe dominated by the Third Reich.” . Bannon’s lawyers wrote: “The Special Report documentary broadcast on this widespread network will undoubtedly be extremely inflammatory and overwhelmingly prejudicial to a prospective juror who begins service in this trial the next day.”
