WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Monday that Steve Bannon should serve six months in prison and pay a $200,000 fine for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The longtime ally of former President Donald Trump should get a hefty sentence because he “pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” and he publicly disparaged the committee itself, undermining the effort to get to the bottom of the violent attack and keep anything like it from happening again, federal attorneys wrote. He has not yet provided any documents or answered any questions, they said.
“The rioters who overran the Capitol on January 6 did not just attack a building—they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country was built and through which it endures,” federal attorneys wrote in court documents. “By flouting the Select Committee’s subpoena and its authority, the Defendant exacerbated that assault.”
The Justice Department push comes shortly after the committee took the extraordinary step last week to subpoena Trump himself, something the members said was necessary to get the full story of what happened Jan. 6, 2021. It’s unclear how Trump will respond to the summons, but a refusal to comply could open up a similar path in court — though holding a former president in contempt would be an unprecedented and fraught process.
Bannon’s lawyers, meanwhile, deny he was acting in bad faith. They’re asking for probation, even though the two contempt convictions each carry a mandatory minimum of one month in prison. “Imposing a sentence of incarceration under the circumstances of Mr. Bannon’s case would run contrary to the fundamental constitutional principles of individualized sentencing and sentencing proportionality,” defense attorneys wrote. They’re also asking for the sentence to be paused while an appeal plays out.
Bannon is set to be sentenced Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition and another for refusing to provide
