The select committee investigating the deadly Capitol riot will vote Tuesday evening to advance criminal contempt proceedings for Steve Bannon after the onetime advisor to former President Donald Trump refused to comply with a subpoena.
The nine-member panel, comprising seven Democrats and two Republicans, is expected to convene at 7:30 p.m. ET to vote on a report recommending that Bannon be held in contempt, according to NBC News. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., are expected to give remarks before the vote, NBC reported.
The vote comes one day after Trump filed a lawsuit aiming to block the committee from obtaining records related to the Jan. 6 invasion, where hundreds of his supporters stormed the Capitol and forced lawmakers to evacuate their chambers.
break loose tomorrow.”
The report also addresses the claims of executive privilege asserted by Trump, and cited by Bannon, to block the committee’s requests for information.
″[A]lthough the Select Committee is confident that such claims could not bar any of its requests, there is no conceivable executive privilege claim that could bar all of the Select Committee’s requests or justify Mr. Bannon’s flat refusal to appear for the required deposition,” the report says.
The report also recommends that the House find Bannon in contempt of Congress. After the report is adopted, it will be sent to the chamber for a vote, the committee said. If approved, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will certify it to the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., who will then bring the matter before a grand jury.
Contempt of Congress is punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $100,000, according to the contempt report.
Trump attempted to assert executive privilege to withhold some of the documents sought by the committee, but President Joe Biden’s administration refused to back that claim, prompting Trump to file his suit.
“Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President’s assertion of privilege,” Biden’s counsel Dana Remus wrote to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero.
Robert Costello, Bannon’s attorney, had leaned on Trump’s privilege claims when explaining the former White House advisor’s refusal to comply with the probe by producing documents or sitting for a deposition.
″[W]e must accept [Trump’s] direction and honor his invocation” of it, Costello wrote in the letter, adding, “We will comply with the directions of the courts, when and if they rule on these claims of both executive and attorney client privileges.”
The panel has flatly rejected the privilege claims from Bannon, who departed the Trump administration years before the Capitol riot, and from the former president.
Trump’s lawsuit “is nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our probe. Precedent and law are on our side. Executive privilege is not absolute and President Biden has so far declined to invoke that privilege,” Thompson and Cheney said in a statement Monday evening.
“Additionally, there’s a long history of the White House accommodating congressional investigative requests when the public interest outweighs other concerns,” they added.
“It’s hard to imagine a more compelling public interest than trying to get answers about an attack on our democracy and an attempt to overturn the results of an election.”
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel, two Trump associates who were also subpoenaed have been engaging with the probe, the committee said.
Their depositions, scheduled for last week, have been slightly postponed “as they continue to engage with our investigation.
