Former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury on charges contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a move that ratchets up the pressure on Trump allies to testify about the deadly insurrection.
Bannon, 67, was charged with one count of contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a deposition and another for refusing to hand over documents to the special House committee investigating the Capitol attack. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland said in a statement the indictment shows his department has a “steadfast commitment” to pursuing justice in such instances.
Bannon, a firebrand political operative who helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign and worked in the White House in 2017, faces a maximum of 1 year in jail and $1,000 fine for each count. Robert Costello, an attorney for Bannon, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Leaders of the special House committee hailed the indictment in a statement, saying it sends “a clear message to anyone who thinks they can ignore the Select Committee or try to stonewall our investigation: no one is above the law.”
“We will not hesitate to use the tools at our disposal to get the information we need,” added Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), chair, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo), vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
The indictment followed a vote by the House last month to hold Bannon in contempt for failing to cooperate with House committee’s inquiry into the Capitol riot. The panel had sought Bannon’s testimony because it said in a resolution the former Trump advisor played key roles “in constructing and participating in the ‘stop the steal’ public relations effort that motivated the attack, [and] his efforts to plan political and other activity in advance of January 6th.”
It noted that Bannon had urged Trump supporters to “take dramatic action,” and said on his podcast on Jan. 5 that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
Bannon was right. The next day, drawn to Washington to support the former president’s months-long, falsehood-filled campaign to overturn an election he lost, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol. They beat police officers, and some chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” after Trump called out his vice president for refusing to try to overturn the electoral college vote. The mob forced Pence and lawmakers to evacuate both chambers of Congress and hide for their safety.
Cheney said last month that Bannon’s refusal to provide information about such matters suggested that “President Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of Jan. 6, and this committee will get to the bottom of that.”
This is not the first time Bannon has faced legal peril. In August of last year, he was pulled from a luxury yacht and arrested on allegations that he and three associates ripped off donors trying to fund a southern border wall. Trump later pardoned Bannon in the final hours of his presidency.
Contempt of Congress prosecutions are rare, and the Justice Department will face legal hurdles in getting a conviction, legal experts said. They will have to prove that Bannon willfully sought to defy the subpoena, but he may be able to argue that he was relying on the advice of his lawyer who told the committee in a letter his client would not comply with the subpoena until lawmakers reached an agreement with Trump or a court rules on the matter.
Ross Garber, an adjunct professor at Tulane Law School, said a conviction “might put more teeth into the threat of criminal contempt as a sanction.”
The House committee has run into stiff resistance from former President Trump in seeking to find out what led to the insurrection. The former president has urged allies and associates not to help investigators, and he is is fighting in court to stop the committee from obtaining records from his time in the White House.
Others may face similar contempt votes and possible prosecution as the committee casts a wider and wider net for information from those who may have information about the insurrection. The committee has subpoenaed nearly three dozen people, including former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
The panel is also seeking to question former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Pentagon aide Kashyap Patel and Dan Scavino, a former White House aide who was close to Trump.
The committee is negotiating with lawyers for many of the witnesses but on Friday hit a dead end with Meadows. Like Bannon, Meadows has sough to resist cooperating by asserting executive privilege, a legal doctrine that has allowed presidents to withhold certain confidential communications from public disclosure.
In a sharply worded statement, Cheney and Thompson said Meadows was refusing to help their probe and suggested he could face sanctions similar to those meted out to Bannon.
“Mr. Meadows’s actions today—choosing to defy the law—will force the Select Committee to consider pursuing contempt or other proceedings to enforce the subpoena,” Thompson and Cheney said in the joint statement. “If his defiance persists and that process moves ahead, the record will reveal the wide range of matters the Select Committee wished to discuss with Mr. Meadows until his decision to hide behind the former President’s spurious claims of privilege.”
Meadows had been in discussions with the committee since his subpoena was issued in September, but his lawyer said Friday that Meadows has a “sharp legal dispute” with the panel as Trump has claimed executive privilege over the testimony.
Thompson had threatened contempt charges against Meadows in a letter to the lawyer, George Terwilliger, on Thursday, saying that if he failed to appear to answer the committee’s questions Friday it would be considered “willful non-compliance.” The committee would first have to vote on the contempt recommendation, then the full House would vote to send it to the Justice Department.
As the sitting president, Biden has so far waived most of Trump’s assertions of privilege over documents. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has backed Biden’s position, noting in one ruling this week that “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
The panel’s proceedings and attempts to gather information have been delayed as Trump appealed Chutkan’s rulings. On Thursday, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the release of some of the White House records the panel is seeking, giving that court time to consider Trump’s arguments.
Staff Writer Erin B. Logan and The Associated Press contributed to this story.