A federal one Court of Appeals unanimously confirmed on Friday criminal contempt of Congress Sentencing former Trump White House senior adviser Steve Bannon for refusing to testify and supply documents to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
The appeals court rejected Bannon's argument that he was not guilty because his lawyer advised him to not comply with a House committee subpoena.
The ruling by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia makes it more likely that Bannon will soon begin serving a four-month prison sentence for his conviction on two contempt counts.
A lawyer for Bannon said he’ll now request that the total D.C. Circuit panel hear his appeal again, which could extend his prison sentence.
Bannon's attorney Doug Schoen told CNBC in an email: “The appeals court ruled today that it does not have the authority to overrule the court's 1961 panel that ruled in the Licavoli case on the definition of the word ' willfully' decided.”' as utilized in the contempt of Congress statute. Mr. Bannon will now seek redress before the total appeals court, which has the ability to overrule Licavoli.
“There are many fundamentally important constitutional issues at stake in this case,” Schoen said. “Today’s decision is wrong from a legal perspective and reflects a very dangerous view of the threshold for criminal liability for a defendant in our country and for future political abuses in the congressional hearing process.”
But requests just like the one Bannon plans to file typically have a really high probability of success.
Friday's decision was written by Judge Bradley Garcia, who was appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by President Joe Biden last yr. The other two justices on the panel were Justin Walker, appointed by former President Donald Trump, and Cornelia Pillard, appointed by former President Barack Obama.
March, Peter Navarro, one other former Trump adviser, served a four-month federal prison sentence after the Supreme Court refused to listen to an appeal of his conviction for refusing to comply with a Jan. 6 House committee subpoena. Pillard also served on the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit that upheld Navarro's conviction.
Bannon is scheduled to face trial individually in New York City state court in September for allegedly defrauding donors who allegedly gave money to a nonprofit group to construct a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, is currently presiding over Trump's hush money trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Bannon was convicted of violating the House committee subpoena after a five-day trial in U.S. District Court in Washington in 2022. He remained at large pending the consequence of his appeal.
In its 20-page ruling Friday on Bannon's case, the D.C. Court of Appeals panel noted that “the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to Appellant Stephen Bannon in September 2021.” to testify and produce documents.”
“Bannon failed to comply with the subpoena – he knew what the subpoena required, but he did not appear or produce a single document,” the ruling says.
The law Bannon was convicted of violating makes it a crime to “willfully” fail to respond to a congressional subpoena.
“Bannon insists that 'willful' must be interpreted to require bad faith and argues that his failure to comply isn’t at issue because his counsel advised him not to reply to the subpoena,” the appeals panel wrote in its Verdict.
“However, this court has clearly found this to be 'intentional.' [that law] simply means that the defendant willfully and willfully refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and that very “counsel recommendation” defense is no defense at all.”
The panel added: “As each this Court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly stated, a provision on the contrary would violate the text of the contempt statute and impair Congress's investigative power.”
“Because we have no basis to depart from this binding precedent, and because none of Bannon's other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm,” the panel wrote.
Bannon was indicted in 2020 on federal charges related to the nonprofit's alleged fraud on donors involved within the border wall plans.
Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021, on certainly one of his final days within the White House, on this case before it went to trial. Three other men who were federally charged in reference to the scheme were convicted or found guilty in court and sentenced to prison.
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