In Bearing Down on Bannon, Prosecutors Could Be Taking Aim at Trump

The decision by the Department of Justice’s prosecutors to urge a judge to throw the book at political raconteur Stephen Bannon previews a line of attack that could soon be trained against Bannon’s one-time boss, President Trump. The call for a six-month prison sentence and a $200,000 fine — the maximum allowed by law — comes after Bannon was convicted of two criminal contempt charges in respect of the January 6 committee. Bannon refused that body’s summons to testify with strident defiance.In respect of sentencing, as opposed to during the guilt phase of a proceeding, a judge contemplates, in the words of the government, “all evidence relevant to the conduct of conviction, including evidence not presented to the jury, without regard to the rules of admissibility at trial.” Bannon’s fate will be decided Friday.In winning that conviction, prosecutors told a jury that Bannon “didn’t get stuck on a broken-down Metro car” but rather “just decided not to follow the rules.” Prior to the trial, Bannon said, “Pray for our enemies, okay? Pray because we’re going medieval on these people. We’re going to savage our enemies.”Bannon was not alone in facing the consequences of noncompliance. Another senior adviser to Mr. Trump, Peter Navarro, has been indicted on the same head, and has vowed to fight the charge in court. The DOJ declined to charge two other counselors, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino Jr., who likewise rebuffed the committee and referrals issued by the entire Democratic House. That act of restraint prompted criticism from members of the committee, with Representative Adam Schiff thundering, “Without enforcement of congressional subpoenas, there is no oversight, and without oversight, no accountability — for the former president, or any other president, past, present, or future.”Prosecutors have argued before the judge overseeing the case, Carl Nichols, that their request has “everything to do with his personal disdain for the members of Congress sitting on the committee and their effort to investigate the attack on our country’s peaceful transfer of power.”In rebuffing Bannon’s request for probation, the government claims that his “contempt was not aimed at protecting executive privilege or the Constitution, rather it was aimed at undermining the committee’s efforts to investigate an historic attack on government.” As proof, its lawyers cite Bannon’s statements on his “War Room” podcast. In the final moments of what was ostensibly its final hearing, the January 6 committee voted unanimously, by both roll call and acclimation, to subpoena Mr. Trump. If that decision is ratified by the full House, the DOJ will have the same decision to make regarding Mr. Trump that it did in respect of Bannon and Messrs. Navarro, Scavino, and Meadows. In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors note that through Bannon’s “public platforms, the Defendant has used hyperbolic and sometimes violent rhetoric to disparage the Committee’s investigation, personally attack the Committee’s members, and ridicule the criminal justice system.”The DOJ lambasted Bannon’s “bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” on a matter of “national importance: the circumstances that led to a violent attack on the Capitol and disruption of the peaceful transfer of power.”The same logic could be deployed against Mr. Trump, should he be convicted of contempt. In response to the subpoena, the one-time president decried the “highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs whose sole function is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots.”Mr. Trump attacked the “Unselect Committee,” claiming it has not “gone after the people that created the Fraud, but rather great American Patriots who questioned it, as is their Constitutional right. These people have had their lives ruined as your Committee sits back and basks in the glow.” In the words of prosecutors, Bannon’s “noncompliance has been complete and unremitting.” If his past is prologue to Mr. Trump’s future, Attorney General Garland could be called on to determine if the same can be said of the man who once brought Bannon to the White House — only to, eventually, banish him from it.

In Bearing Down on Bannon, Prosecutors Could Be Taking Aim at Trump

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