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Jury selection is underway in the federal trial of Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a Jan. 6 House committee order to turn over records and testify about his actions before the attack on the US Capitol.
The committee issued a subpoena to Bannon, saying it wanted to question him about activities at the Willard Hotel the night before the riot, when supporters of President Donald Trump tried to persuade Republican lawmakers to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The committee said Bannon was spoke with Trump on the phone this morning and evening, the last time since Bannon predicted “all hell will break loose” on January 6. some premonition of extreme events that will happen the next day.
Refusing to testify and turn over records, Bannon claimed executive privilege, and his lawyer said he had been contacted by Trump lawyer Justin Clark and instructed not to respond.
However, arguments about executive privilege are not expected to be the focus of the trial. During a preliminary hearing this month, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols rejected several of Bannon’s defenses, including the claim of executive privilege, and narrowed Bannon’s defenses at trial mainly to whether he understood the deadlines for responding to lawmakers’ requests.
Nichols agreed with prosecutors’ argument that, under binding legal precedent, Bannon’s reasons for not complying with the House panel’s subpoenas are irrelevant if he willfully ignored them. The judge also disputed that former President Trump asserted executive privilege for Bannon or that he would cover the conversations in question because the latter left the White House in 2017 and was a private individual at the time.
Facing trial, Bannon vows to go “medieval,” but the judge says “meh.”
A former media executive who boasted of creating a “platform for the alt-right,” Bannon has championed a “populist-nationalist” movement since chairing Trump’s campaign for part of 2016. Although he has denied responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters, he was seen as the ideological architect of the effort to nullify the election and Trump’s Jan. 6 rally. His trial comes amid heightened interest in hearings the committee held on Jan. 6 to investigate the 2021 Capitol break-in.
Each of the felony charges is punishable by at least 30 days or up to one year in jail upon conviction. However, the three offenders, who pleaded guilty to rare felony charges of withholding information from Congress dating back to the 1990s, received probation in plea deals with U.S. prosecutors.
This story will be updated. Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
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