Appeals court upholds Steve Bannon's contempt conviction for defying Jan. 6 committee
WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court upheld on Friday the contempt conviction of Steve Bannon, the political strategist and former White House aide to Donald Trump, for defying a subpoena about the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals − Judges Cornelia Pillard, Justin Walker and Bradley Garcia – ruled that Bannon's arguments had no merit. The decision clears the way for Bannon to serve a four-month prison sentence but Bannon's lawyer David Schoen told USA TODAY they will ask the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the decision.
"There are many fundamentally important constitutional issues at stake in this case," Schoen said in a statement. "Today’s decision is wrong as a matter of law and it reflects a very dangerous view of the threshold for criminal liability for any defendant in our country and for future political abuses of the congressional hearing process."
Bannon was one of two people convicted, along with former White House aide Peter Navarro, for defying congressional subpoenas for the Jan. 6 inquiry.
Bannon's case had raised the prospect of setting new rules governing the assertion of executive privilege, but the appeals panel found no reason to depart from previous rulings in the D.C. Circuit and at the Supreme Court that bar "willfully" defying a congressional subpoena.
"As both this court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly explained, a contrary rule would contravene the text of the contempt statute and hamstring Congress’s investigatory authority," Garcia wrote for court.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/appeals-court-upholds-steve-bannons-155806636.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall