Steve Bannon, the former top strategist to Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday in his contempt of Congress trial - a victory for the House January 6 select committee that referred him for prosecution as it continues to investigate the former president’s role in the Capitol attack.
The jury in federal court took less than three hours to return its verdict and found Bannon guilty on two contempt charges stemming from his refusal to comply last year with a subpoena in the congressional investigation seeking documents and testimony.
Bannon, 68, wearing a dark blazer over two gray collared shirts, showed little emotion as the jury found him guilty. After the trial judge left the courtroom, Bannon talked lightheartedly with his lawyers before walking out into the scorching Washington summer heat.
The jury’s verdict reinforced the message to other potential witnesses and targets in the congressional investigation that blanket defiance of a subpoena could come with far-reaching consequences, including a statutory minimum of 30 days in jail and thousands of dollars in fines.
“Bannon had an obligation to appear before the House select committee to give testimony and provide documents,” said the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves. “His refusal to do so was deliberate and now a jury has found he must pay the consequences.”
But Bannon will appeal the conviction after his sentencing, which is tentatively scheduled for late October. The appeal will aim to capitalize on a pre-trial assessment by the DC district court judge Carl Nichols that the precedent which forced him to exclude Bannon’s main defense arguments was bad law that might be overturned.
The far-right provocateur had largely expected to be convicted, according to people close to Bannon, and has been preparing to play the long game with an appeal, which would see the case outlast the congressional investigation, which has a mandate expiring in January 2023.
In fact, outside court Friday, he told reporters: “We may have lost a battle here today but we haven’t lost the war.
Bannon’s legal team declined to present evidence in defense after Nichols, saying he was bound by the controlling case law Licavoli v United States 1961, excluded their main arguments. The case turned on whether Bannon was in “willful” defiance of the select committee’s subpoena.
The government, according to Licavoli, merely had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bannon’s refusal to comply was deliberate and intentional, and the assistant US attorney Amanda Vaughn told the jury in closing arguments that they should find the case straightforward.
“The defense wants to make this hard, difficult and confusing,” Vaughn said in federal court in Washington DC. “This is not difficult. This is not hard. There were only two witnesses because it’s as simple as it seems.”
In closing arguments for the defense, Bannon’s attorney Evan Corcoran suggested the select committee’s subpoena was illegitimate since the signature of the panel’s chair, Bennie Thompson, appeared suspect. He also argued that the subpoena deadlines were “placeholders” that could be negotiated.
Bannon “didn’t intentionally refuse to comply with a subpoena”, Corcoran said. “He didn’t intentionally refuse to comply with anything.”
The trial strategy for Bannon indeed appeared mostly geared towards an appeal. Nichols ruled before the trial that Bannon could not argue his non-compliance came on the advice of counsel, or that he believed he had absolute immunity from the investigation because of executive privilege.
That meant the only arguments left available to Bannon were either that he was somehow confused about the deadlines indicated on the subpoena, or that he did not realize the deadlines were concrete and thought that he was not in defiance of the order.
Bannon had also wanted to make the argument that he was now engaging with the subpoena after Donald Trump furnished him with a letter claiming he was waiving executive privilege – though that entire premise has been suspect given the subpoena also asked for non-privileged materials.
That line of argument also never seemed particularly persuasive after it was revealed that despite seemingly offering to cooperate with the select committee, and receiving a new letter from the panel seeking documents, Bannon is understood to have turned over nothing.
Bannon’s trial lasted five days. It started on Monday with jury selection, when several potential jurors were excluded because of familiarity with the case or the January 6 investigations. The prosecution witnesses were chief counsel for the congressional panel, Kristin Amerling, and the FBI agent Stephen Hart.
Unrepentant, the onetime Trump strategist was expected to return to hosting his streaming show, War Room, after the verdict.
Bannon is one of two former Trump White House aides to face contempt of Congress charges for not complying with the select committee’s subpoenas, alongside Peter Navarro. The former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and his deputy, Dan Scavino, were referred for prosecution but not charged.
Unlike Bannon and Navarro, Meadows and Scavino engaged in months of negotiations with the panel about the scope of testimony and executive privilege concerns. Meadows also turned over thousands of text messages before he ultimately withdrew from talks about appearing for a deposition.
