(Photograph by Ben Jackson/Getty Pictures for SiriusXM) Stephen Ok. Bannon
If Steve Bannon had bothered to indicate up in court docket right now, he’d have gotten to witness an absolute banger of a bench-slapping. Because it was, his legal professionals Evan Corcoran and David Schoen appeared very shocked when US District Choose Carl J. Nichols drop-kicked all however certainly one of their eleventy-seven motions and purported defenses to the cost of legal contempt of Congress, together with their movement to proceed the trial scheduled for subsequent Monday.
“What’s the purpose of going to trial if there are not any defenses?” wondered Schoen, in accordance with Lawfare’s Roger Parloff, who live-tweeted the listening to from DC.
In actuality, there by no means have been any defenses — at the least not since April, when Choose Nichols blocked Bannon’s plan to say that he’d relied on counsel of his then-lawyer Robert Costello and a companion idea that Bannon acted in good religion reliance on the previous president’s invocation of government privilege.
[Side note: Trump never invoked privilege, and new testimony from his lawyer confirms it.]
The DC Circuit held in 1961 that mistake of legislation is not any protection to contempt of Congress. And but, Bannon’s attorneys insisted — repeatedly, and at excessive decibel — that their shopper’s mistaken perception that the Justice Division wasn’t allowed to prosecute him meant that he might blow off a subpoena from the January 6 Choose Committee with impunity.
Alongside the best way, they gussied up the rejected recommendation of counsel protection and renamed it “entrapment by estoppel,” whereas re-christening reliance as “public authority.” However the court docket wouldn’t let Bannon Sharpie up his pleading to learn “my lawyer informed me that the Workplace of Authorized Counsel says it gained’t prosecute anybody when there’s a declare of government privilege, and subsequently they’re estopped from charging me.” And moreover Trump wasn’t a public official in October of 2021, so he couldn’t signal Bannon’s permission slip for a public authority protection. Womp womp.
On the day he was arraigned, Bannon stood on the courthouse steps and brayed that he’d flip his case into “the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.” Seems … not a lot. As a result of he’s not going to get to current proof that the Choose Committee is biased, or that its subpoenas are illegitimate, a lot much less put Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jamie Raskin on the witness stand. As a result of, bro, do you even separation of powers?
Equally, the court docket rejected Bannon’s movement to subpoena the Justice Division for inner deliberations concerning the choice to not prosecute Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, Trump’s chief of workers and his communications flack, each of whom refused to testify for the committee. If we by no means once more should hearken to Crew Bannon shout {that a} podcaster who bought fired from the White Home in 2017 has the identical declare to privilege two males who have been within the Oval Workplace on January 6, 2021, it’ll be too quickly!
Lastly, the court docket refused to postpone the case on the idea that publicity from the January 6 Committee hearings would prejudice the jury, or alternatively that there have been far too many pending motions pending to go to trial in every week. As to the primary, Choose Nichols discovered that any potential bias could possibly be handled throughout voir dire. And having resolved each movement from the bench, the second difficulty was mooted.
It wasn’t all dangerous information for Bannon, who gained his struggle to maintain the jury from listening to the indictment learn aloud, or receiving a duplicate of it with the jury directions.
Aside from that, although … bupkiss.
US v. Bannon [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she writes about legislation and politics.
