Judging Freedom - Steve Bannon - Guilty

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

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Breaking news. Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former campaign manager and top conciliary in the first year and a half of Trump's tenure in the White House, was just convicted, convicted by a federal jury after a four-day trial in Washington, D.C. of two counts of contempt, contempt of Congress. I'll give you a little background. There's two kinds of contempt. There's contempt when a person refuses to answer a question to a judge. The judge can put the person in jail until they decide to answer the question. And then a time comes when it may be fruitless to keep them in jail when no matter how odious the jail conditions are or how long

their time in jail may be, they're simply not going to answer. Another type of contempt is criminal contempt. Criminal contempt is refusal to cooperate with the judicial system whatsoever. That's what happened to Steve Bannon. So Bannon received one subpoena and it required two things. It required that he cough up documents, which he declined to do, and it required that he show up for testimony, which he declined to do. Now he could have done what Roger Stone or Alex Jones did. They received the identical subpoena that Steve Bannon did. They showed up and said, I refuse to answer and invoke my right to silence, which is protected by the Fifth Amendment. It's a bit of a pain in the neck. They may ask you two or three hundred questions, and you will have to answer two or 300 questions nearly identically, but then you go home. They

don't prosecute you. In the case of Steve Bannon, he refused to show up. He refused to cooperate with the committee. His lawyers admittedly were in some type of negotiation with the committee, but when the time came and there was no deal, his duty was to show up and either answer questions or decline to answer questions as Stone and Jones did. Stone and Jones cannot be prosecuted for what they did, but because Steve Bannon refused to cooperate with a lawful subpoena, lawfully issued, properly executed, properly served upon him, the government charged him with contempt. A grand jury indicted him, and today a trial jury convicted him. Now, these are not huge crimes. They are misdemeanors, which by definition means the maximum punishment is a thousand dollars

fine and a year in jail for each. Theoretically, he could be fined $2,000 and served two years in jail. He has no priors that I am aware of. He is the beneficiary of a pardon from the President of the United States, but that didn't undo a conviction. That undid a prosecution against him. My opinion is he does not deserve to go to jail and probably won't go to jail, but you never know. The judge is a Donald Trump appointee, but who's a stickler for the law, as he should be. He basically said to Bannon, you have no defense here. The fact that Donald Trump asked you not to testify is not a defense. He's no longer the president. If you, Mr. Bannon, you have no defense here. The fact that Donald Trump asked you not to testify is not a defense. He's no longer the president. If you, Mr. Bannon, were working in the White House

and Trump were still the president, then your communications with the president would be privileged, but you would have to still show up and assert the privilege. I'm sorry I can't answer that because it's covered by executive privilege. It was a communication with the president and he has invoked the privilege, which bars me from testifying. Again, you may have to do that a few hundred times, but by doing nothing, by not showing up, by thumbing your nose at the system, that's the essence of the criminality. The government presented two witnesses, an FBI agent and the chief counsel for the January 6th committee. Bannon's people cross-examined them, presented no witnesses.

The defendant didn't testify. The government said it's a slam-dunk case. The defendant said it's a political prosecution. The jury believed the government, beyond a reasonable doubt, Bannon convicted, sentencing in the fall. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning.

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