The jury has charged him with two misdemeanors for refusing to testify and provide documents to the committee investigating the assault on the Capitol
The ideologue of trumpismguilty of contempt of the United States Congress. Steve Bannon has been sentenced this Friday for neglecting a summons of committee investigating the robbery Capitol last year, a decision that strengthens the position of the Democrats at the head of the committee. The jury has found the former Trump adviser, one of the most prominent figures on the American media right, guilty of two misdemeanors for refuse to testify Y provide the documents requested by the committee of the House of Representatives that tries to clarify the responsibilities of what happened on that fateful January 6, 2021.
Each charge carries a potential penalty ranging from 30 days and one year in prisonas well as with a $100 to $100,000 fine. The verdict of the jury, made up of eight men and four women, after less than three hours of deliberations, marks the first conviction for contempt of Congress since 1974, when a judge convicted G. Gordon Liddy, one of the conspirators in the scandal. Watergate that caused the resignation of the president Richard Nixon.
Bannon’s long shadow
Bannon was a key adviser in Republican Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, to become soon after the main strategist of the first months of his presidency. The subsequent disagreement between the two, perhaps motivated by the bad relations he had with the tycoon’s children, took him out of the White House, although time has been mending the wounds of those days.
Lawyers for Bannon, who tried to spread his far-right populism in Europe after leaving the White House, tried to paint the trial as a politically motivated witch hunt and accused the main prosecution witness of being a Democrat linked to one of the prosecutors. The Prosecutor’s Office responded by accusing him of having despised Congress by refusing to testify, as established by law.
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Prosecutor Molly Gaston told jurors that the attack was a “dark day” for the United States, adding: “There is nothing political about figuring out why it happened on January 6 and making sure it doesn’t happen again.” Evan Corcoran, one of Bannon’s attorneys, countered by asking jurors: “The question is: Why? Why was Steve Bannon singled out?”
The conviction may strengthen the position of the committee in its attempt to obtain testimony and documents from other people of interest in Trump’s orbit. Trump last year asked his advisers not to cooperate with the committee, which he accused of being politically motivated. Several of them followed his instructions, such as Peter Navarro, charged in June with contempt of Congress for refusing to appear in a statement before the committee. Navarro’s trial is scheduled to begin in November.