The Department of Justice rested its case against Stephen K. Bannon on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, DC, calling just two witnesses in trying to prove that he committed contempt of Congress in snubbing the January 6 Committee.
The day opened with a resumption of testimony of Kirsten Amerling, the chief counsel of the committee, who testified about her opinion about the validity and urgency of the committee’s subpoena to Bannon, a former aide to President Donald Trump and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News.
Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, has prevented the defense from raising objections to the legality of the subpoena, including the argument that the committee is violating the separation of powers and the terms of its own enabling resolution.
Instead, the defense is limited to arguing that Bannon did not intend “willfully” to commit contempt of Congress, but was negotiating in good faith on the understanding that executive privilege protected his communications with President Trump.
In their cross-examination of Amerling, the defense established that Amerling had past professional and political ties to prosecutor Molly Gaston, including working for a Democratic congressman and participating in a left-leaning book club.
The defense’s goal was to undermine Amerling’s testimony that she was non-partisan and that her legal opinions to the Democrat-dominated committee were not based on a partisan political agenda but rather on a good faith reading of the law.
The prosecution’s second and final witness, FBI agent Stephen Hart, testified that Bannon had posted messages on the Gettr social media network advertising his refusal to work with the January 6 Committee and his intention to fight the subpoena.
However, on cross-examination, it emerged that the messages cited by Hart were, in fact, simply articles about Bannon that had been posted to Bannon’s account, whose headlines were not comments by Bannon but auto-populated on the platform.
The defense begins its case Thursday morning. On Tuesday, defense attorney David Schoen told Breitbart News that the judge’s rulings in the case had created ample grounds for appeal.
Also on Thursday, the committee will hold what is billed as its final public hearing. The committee has only presented an anti-Trump case, and has been accused of deceptively editing video evidence and closed-door depositions by witnesses.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.