With his contempt of Congress trial four months away, Steve Bannon and the Justice Department are tussling over how much the former Trump adviser will be able to pin his defiance of Congress on the legal advice he received before refusing to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.
That pretrial dispute — and a tangential one, centered on how the Justice Department went about investigating the counsel Bannon received — will be argued Wednesday before a federal judge in DC.
Already, the briefs that have been filed by both sides have featured an extraordinary amount of sniping and accusations.
In Bannon’s telling, the prosecutors suffer from “unparalleled arrogance” and “are in a deep hole already, yet they continue to frantically dig.” The Justice Department has called some of Bannon’s allegations “hyperbolic,” while describing his legal arguments as “erroneous” and “without merit.”
Bannon’s case, brought after he failed to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee, offers an important test of the powers of government as Congress tries to force consequences for witnesses who do not comply with subpoenas. Continue Reading
(SOURCE) https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/politics/bannon-lawyer-justice-department-hearing/index.html
