Jury finds Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress
A Washington jury has found Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress after the former adviser to Donald Trump refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the January 6 committee.
Updated at 14.56 EDT
Key events
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The White House has identified 17 close contacts of President Joe Biden, who tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday.
Speaking at a briefing to reporters, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the group members have all been informed, but none has tested positive.
“The White House medical unit has identified and informed 17 people determined to be close contacts of the president, including members of his senior staff. None of the staff members have tested positive to date, and all of them are wearing masks around other people,” Jean-Pierre said.
President Joe Biden has appeared at a White House event – virtually, due to his Covid-19 infection.
“I feel much better than I sound,” he said, flashing a thumbs-up and smiling on-screen.
He didn’t have much more to say about that, but the event is focusing on gas prices, which are declining nationally from their record high levels hit last month, according to GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan:
37 days in a row: #gasprices keep falling, the national average
2.2c to $4.419/gal. We’re likely to fall to $4.399/gal by late today. 8 states under $4: TX, SC, GA, MS, LA, AL, TN, & AR. 35k stations <$4. Most common price in the US: $3.99.
— Patrick De Haan
(@GasBuddyGuy) July 22, 2022
Steve Bannon’s lawyer plans to challenge his conviction immediately after sentencing, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
New: Steve Bannon’s lawyer David Schoen tells reporters outside the courthouse just now that they will appeal today’s contempt of Congress conviction — they expect to file after sentencing on October 21 at 3p ET.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 22, 2022
CNN reports attorney David Schoen is confident that the verdict against Bannon will be overturned:
“Bulletproof appeal,” David Schoen, Bannon lawyer, tells reporters. “You will see this case reversed on appeal.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 22, 2022
Here’s the latest from Guardian US reporters on the conviction of Steve Bannon, a noteworthy figure in the world of Trump advisers:
Steve Bannon was on Friday convicted of contempt of Congress at trial in federal court in Washington DC, for defying a subpoena by the committee investigating last year’s attack on the Capitol by supporters of his former boss Donald Trump.
The case for criminal contempt went to the jury just a few hours prior on Friday, after prosecutors and defense lawyers made their final pitches about Trump’s former presidential adviser.
Bannon was charged with two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to appear before the House committee, each count carries a minimum of 30 days in jail and up to a year. He had denied the charges but was found guilty on both counts.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the judge presiding in the case hinted at a potential grounds for the appeal of any guilty verdict – which Bannon is likely to do:
New: Steve Bannon will almost certainly appeal after Judge Nichols, a Trump appointee, indicated pre-trial that he considered the controlling case law that forced him to exclude the main defence arguments bad law.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 22, 2022
Reuters has more details on the severity of the sentence Bannon could face:
For each of the two contempt of Congress counts, Steve Bannon could be sentenced from 30 days to one year behind bars and fined between $100 and $100,000
— Matt Spetalnick (@mattspetalnick) July 22, 2022
Bannon will wait a few months before being sentenced, according to NBC News:
Bannon will be sentenced on October 21, though an appeal is pretty certain.
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) July 22, 2022
Jury finds Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress
A Washington jury has found Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress after the former adviser to Donald Trump refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the January 6 committee.
Updated at 14.56 EDT
A verdict has been reached in the trial of Steve Bannon, Politico reports.
Bannon is a former adviser to Donald Trump who is facing contempt of Congress charges for defying a subpoena from the January 6 committee.
Joe Biden released a statement condemning the attack against Lee Zeldin, a Republican Congressman from New York who is the Republican candidate for governor in the state. During a speech yesterday, a man climbed onstage and pulled Zeldin to the ground. Zeldin was not injured as people started to rush the stage to assist him.
“I condemn the attack on Congressman Zeldin in the strongest terms,” Biden said in his statement. “As I’ve said before, violence has absolutely no place in our society or our politics. I am especially grateful for the courage of those who immediately intervened, and that he is unharmed and was able to continue his speech.”
Updated at 14.21 EDT
Sports news website SB Nation managed to find a sports angle to the clip of Josh Hawley fleeing the Capitol during the insurrection after raising a fist to Trump supporters in solidarity.
Using some interesting mathematical calculations, SB Nation calculated that if the Republican senator was running a 40-yard-dash, he would have had a time of 7.2 seconds.
It’s a pretty slow time, but “Hawley is in dress shoes on a tile floor, not on astroturf in spikes,” noted James Dator, SB Nation writer. “Furthermore, it’s unclear where in his stride he was when he crossed the hall. Maybe he was really winded before he got there?”
Tucked away in South Carolina’s bill that outlaws abortion is a provision that would make it illegal to provide information of how to get an abortion over the phone or internet.
Such a provision would take abortion bans to an extreme and is likely an indication of how radical anti-abortion laws will be to come.
“These are going to be laws that spread like wildfire through states that have shown hostility to abortion,” Michelle Goodwin, a professor at University of California at Irvine Law School, told the Washington Post, which reported on the provision.
South Carolina currently has six-week abortion ban in place following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. The state’s House of Representatives has been considering even stricter legislation after the ruling. The House has convened a special session to pass abortion restrictions.
“Now is a good time. We have children being aborted in our state, as well as the rest of the country, and we have the information,” South Carolina governor Henry McMaster told the State, a newspaper in South Carolina. “It’s time to get on with the discussion and make whatever decisions are necessary.”
Today so far
Here’s what has happened today so far:
- Joe Biden’s Covid-19 symptoms have “improved”, the White House doctor said Friday morning. While the president had a mild fever last night, his temperature has gone back to normal. Biden is currently taking anti-Covid drug Paxlovid. He is experiencing a runny nose and fatigue, with an occasional cough.
- Washington is still reeling from yesterday’s January 6 committee hearing, where the committee laid out a case against Donald Trump’s inaction as the riot was taking place. One presidential historian has warned Americans not to be complacent about what those behind the attack were trying to accomplish.
- A report from this morning revealed that Trump, if elected as president in 2024, would replace tens of thousands of civil servants across the US government with his supporters, according to sources close to the former president. =
We’re still keeping an eye on the trial of Steve Bannon, which continues today, along with Trump’s appearance at a rally later this afternoon. Stay tuned.
news dcr-f3pcia">Jeffrey Clark was a key figure in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The president tried to appoint him to lead the justice department, which would have allowed Clark to send a letter to Georgia state lawmakers informing them that there were “significant concerns” about the results that showed Joe Biden winning the state.
That effort was thwarted when Justice Department senior staff threatened to resign en masse if Clark, whom they viewed as unqualified, was appointed. Clark has since become the subject of a probe by the justice department’s inspector general, the FBI raided his house last month, and today, Reuters reports that Washington DC’s law license administrator is considering disciplinary action against him.
According to their report:
Clark, who is now also facing a federal investigation into his conduct, is accused of attempting to “engage in conduct involving dishonesty” and attempting actions “that would seriously interfere with the administration of justice,” according to a petition filed by the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
The ethics charges, dated June 29 and received by the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on July 19, were made public on Friday, after Clark was served a copy of them in the morning, said Hamilton “Phil” Fox, the head of the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
Rachel Semmel, a spokesperson from Center for Renewing America, Clark’s new employer, called the charges “the latest attack on the legal qualifications of one of the only lawyers at the DOJ who had the interests of the American people at heart.”
“Jeff Clark is an American hero and the media sure seems to enjoy being the press secretary for the J6 committee,” she added.
As the report points out, similar charges have been filed against Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was involved in many of the ex-president’s schemes to overturn the result of the 2020 vote.
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