Bannon contempt trial: After guilty verdict, Bannon rips Jan. 6 committee members

Federal prosecutors in Steve Bannon's contempt trial raised concerns with the judge that Bannon's team has been suggesting to the jury that this is a "politically motivated prosecution" before the second day of testimony got underway Wednesday morning.

Before the jury was brought in, prosecutor Amanda Vaughn asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to make sure the jury "doesn’t hear one more word about this case being" politically motivated, after she said the defense's opening statement Tuesday had "clear implications" that the defense was making that claim.

Nichols had barred such arguments from the trial.

In response, defense attorney Evan Corcoran defended his opening statement, saying it "was clearly on the line."

Nichols then made it clear that during trial, the defense team may ask witnesses questions about whether they themselves may be biased -- "but may not ask questions about whether someone else was biased in an action they took outside this courtroom."

"I do not intend for this to become a political case, a political circus," Nichols said.

Speaking to reporters after the first full day in court, Bannon blasted members of the Jan. 6 committee and House Democrats for not showing up as witnesses in his trial.

"Where is Bennie Thompson?" asked Bannon regarding the Jan. 6 committee chairman. "He's made it a crime, not a civil charge ... have the guts and the courage to show up here and say exactly why it's a crime."

"I will promise you one thing when the Republicans that are sweeping to victory on Nov. 8 -- starting in January, you're going to get a real committee," Bannon said. "We're going to get a real committee with a ranking member who will be a Democrat ... and this will be run
appropriately and the American people will get the full story."

-Laura Romero and Soo Rin Kim

The first witness for the prosecution, Kristin Amerling of the Jan. 6 committee, testified that a subpoena is not voluntary.

Amerling, the Jan. 6 panel's deputy staff director and chief counsel, read aloud the congressional resolution creating the committee and explained that the committee's role is to recommend "corrective measures" to prevent future attacks like the one on Jan. 6.

"Is a subpoena voluntary in any way?" asked prosecutor Amanda Vaughn.

"No," Amerling replied.

Amerling also discussed how important it is to get information in a timely manner because the committee's authority runs out at the end of the year. "There is an urgency to the focus of the Select Committee's work ... we have a limited amount of time in which to gather information," she said.

Amerling noted that Bannon was subpoenaed pretty early on in the committee's investigation.

She said the committee subpoenaed Bannon in particular because public accounts indicated that Bannon tried to persuade the public that the 2020 election was "illegitimate"; that on his podcast the day before Jan. 6 he made statements "including that all hell was going to break loose, that suggested he might have some advance knowledge of the events of Jan. 6"; that he was involved in discussions with White House officials, including Trump himself, relating to "strategies surrounding the events of Jan. 6"; and that he had been involved in discussions in the days leading up to Jan. 6 with "private parties who had gathered in the Willard hotel in Washington, D.C., reportedly to discuss strategies around efforts to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power or overturning the election results."

"Is that something that would have been relevant to the committee's investigation?" Vaughn asked.

"Yes, because the Select Committee was tasked with trying to understand what happened on Jan. 6, and why," Amerling replied.

Amerling will be back on the stand Wednesday morning when the trial resumes.

Bannon's defense attorney Matt "Evan" Corcoran said in his opening statement that "no one ignored the subpoena" issued to Bannon, and that "there was direct engagement by Bob Costello," Bannon's attorney, with the House committee, specifically committee staffer Kristin Amerling.

He said Costello "immediately" communicated to the committee that there was an objection to the subpoena, "and that Steve Bannon could not appear and that he could not provide documents."

"So there was no ignoring the subpoena," Corcoran said. What followed was "a considerable back and forth" between Amerling and Costello -- "they did what two lawyers do, they negotiated."

Corcoran said, "the government wants you to believe … that Mr. Bannon committed a crime by not showing up to a congressional hearing room ... but the evidence is going to be crystal clear no one, no one believed Mr. Bannon was going to appear on Oct. 14, 2021," and the reasons he couldn't appear had been articulated to the committee.

Corcoran told the jury that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable that Steve Bannon willfully defaulted when he didn't appear for the deposition on Oct. 14, 2021 -- "but you'll find from the evidence that that date on the subpoena was the subject of ongoing discussions" and it was not "fixed."

In addition, Corcoran told jurors, you will hear that "almost every single one" of the witnesses subpoenaed led to negotiations between committee staff and lawyers, and often the appearance would be at a later date than what was on the subpoena.

Corcoran also argued that the prosecution may have been infected by politics, telling the jury that with each document or each statement provided at trial, they should ask themselves: "Is this piece of evidence affected by politics?"