Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Jurors made short work Friday of former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon\u2019s defense on contempt of Congress charges, returning two guilty verdicts against him after less than three hours of deliberation, including a lunch break.<\/p>\n
The pair of guilty verdicts from a D.C. jury for Bannon over his defiance of a subpoena from the House committee probing the Jan. 6 attacks and former President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign to overturn the 2020 election results are sure to grab the attention of other witnesses still resisting the panel\u2019s requests or who may have given less-than-forthcoming testimony up to this point.<\/p>\n
However, any actual jail time for Bannon in the case could be modest and may be years away. And the significant restraints the judge put on the defenses Bannon could offer at trial raise issues that could find traction at an appeals court or even the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s POLITICO\u2019s look at the key takeaways from Bannon\u2019s brief but attention-grabbing trial this week in D.C. federal court:<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most central figure in Bannon\u2019s conviction Friday and the key to his potential victory in any appeal is a long-dead Detroit mobster and bootlegger, Peter \u201cHorseface\u201d Licavoli.<\/p>\n
Licavoli died almost four decades ago and spent time in federal prison on a colorful variety of charges, including tax evasion, bribery and trafficking in stolen art. However, it was his refusal to testify to Sen. Estes Kefauver\u2019s 1951 hearings on organized crime that produced a legal precedent central to Bannon\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
A decade later, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a contempt-of-Congress conviction against Licavoli, ruling that he could not rely on his lawyer\u2019s legal advice as a defense.<\/p>\n
While the precedent<\/a> was set 61 years ago, U.S. District Court Carl Nichols concluded it is still good law and, as a result, Bannon could not use the advice-of-counsel defense. The ruling also undercut Bannon\u2019s ability to argue that executive privilege excused him from showing up in response to the subpoena.<\/p>\n However, Nichols said on several occasions before and during the trial that he thinks the Licavoli case may well be wrong under modern legal standards, but he was compelled to apply it anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cI was bound by D.C. Circuit precedent that I\u2019m not even sure is right,\u201d the Trump-appointed judge said Thursday.<\/p>\n Now, Bannon\u2019s lawyers will face the task of trying to get the decision overturned or deemed irrelevant, something that may require getting Bannon\u2019s case in front of the full bench of the appeals court or even taking it to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The judge\u2019s ruling on that issue left the former Trump White House aide with little in the way of feasible defenses. He was left with slender and unsatisfying theories: he didn\u2019t understand the deadlines on the subpoena or thought they were flexible because sometimes congressional committees negotiate with witnesses.<\/p>\n That left Bannon\u2019s attorneys sometimes trying to grasp at out-there arguments, like the possibility that House Jan. 6 Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson<\/a>\u2019s signature on the subpoena might have been forged. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can ask yourself if one of those things is different than the other,\u201d said defense attorney Evan Corcoran, displaying various Thompson signatures from other letters and from the subpoena to Bannon. \u201cThat could be a doubt as to the government\u2019s case, a reasonable doubt as to whether Chairman Thompson signed this subpoena. \u2026 If you\u2019ve got a doubt in your mind, you\u2019ve got to give Steve Bannon the benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Bannon managed to get many of his arguments in front of the jury. They wound up seeing the entirety of letters in which Bannon lawyer Robert Costello argued for executive privilege. They also learned of a belated offer by Bannon, earlier this month, to testify under certain conditions. <\/p>\n Bannon said that move was prompted by Trump withdrawing his executive privilege claims, but prosecutors said the offer was a transparent effort to sow confusion on the eve of trial.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a last-minute excuse, another excuse,\u201d prosecutor Amanda Vaughn told the jury. \u201cHis haphazard attempt to get out of his contempt by pretending to comply now is a waste of everyone\u2019s time.\u201d<\/p>\n Nichols did tell jurors not to consider the executive privilege issue, but if there was a juror open to persuasion to Bannon\u2019s side of the story, he or she had what she needed to piece that together. It appears there was no such juror.<\/p>\n Of all the judges who could have been assigned to Bannon\u2019s case, Nichols seemed like about the best pick he could have hoped for. Only two of the 22 judges assigned to Jan. 6 criminal cases have publicly raised serious questions about the substance of some such prosecutions: Nichols and colleague Trevor McFadden. Both are Trump appointees.<\/p>\n Nichols is the first and only judge among the 22 to have thrown out felony obstruction charges in Jan. 6 on pretrial motions, concluding that the statute doesn\u2019t cover the conduct alleged unless it was aimed directly at official documents, such as the paper electoral college certifications sent in by states.<\/p>\n The Justice Department has appealed those rulings. Every other judge to consider the issue has disagreed with Nichols.<\/p>\n Nichols also happens to preside over a series of civil defamation lawsuits related to 2020 election fraud claims, including cases the Dominion voting machine company brought against several Trump allies, including Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell. Last year, Nichols rejected their motions to dismiss the cases, making it more likely they will proceed to fact-finding.<\/p>\n Nichols, 52, is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman. Nichols led the Justice Department\u2019s unit handling civil litigation against the government under President George W. Bush\u2019s administration, then spent about a decade in private practice at D.C. law firm Wilmer Cutler.<\/p>\n Nichols was confirmed in 2019 and has been on the bench a little more than three years, so has limited experience presiding over trials, which were suspended in Washington federal court for more than a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n At times, Nichols’ status as a criminal trial novice seemed to show through. The judge often seemed to defer or revisit rulings. And some typical courtroom formalities were not observed. It wasn\u2019t clear why, for instance, Bannon wasn\u2019t asked to stand when the verdicts were read. Or why the judge often left the bench before the jury rather than after it. But there was no sign those oddities affected the outcome of the trial.<\/p>\n What may have sealed Bannon\u2019s prosecution and the guilty verdicts Friday was the all-or-nothing stand he and lawyer Costello took in their dealings with the House committee, refusing to produce any documents and failing even to appear on Capitol Hill in response to the subpoena.<\/p>\n Costello seems to have crafted or endorsed that strategy in the absolutist letters sent to the House committee, claiming not only that Bannon could not testify but that he was somehow legally forbidden from doing so even though he was a private citizen on Jan. 6 and in the months and years leading up to it.<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n
Bannon\u2019s no-defense defense<\/h5>\n
Could Bannon have drawn any better D.C. judge?<\/h5>\n
Did Bannon get bad advice or the advice he was looking for?<\/h5>\n