Steve Bannon's Contempt Of Congress Conviction Upheld By Appeals Court
Huff PostWASHINGTON — A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld the criminal conviction of Donald Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol. But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Trump had fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the riot, Bannon’s lawyers argued at trial that he wasn’t acting in bad faith, but was trying to avoid running afoul of executive privilege objections Trump had raised. Bannon’s lawyers told the appeals court that the conviction should be overturned because, among other reasons, they said the committee’s subpoena was invalid. Bannon also argued that the judge that oversaw the trial wrongly quashed subpoenas seeking testimony and records from the committee’s own members, staffers and counsel his lawyers argued could have bolstered his defense.