Friday, May 10, 2024

Appeals court upholds Steve Bannon’s conviction for defying Jan. 6 probe. (Politico)

Lock him up.  Slick contumacious serial contemnors STEPHEN KEVIN BANNON (M.B.A. Harvard, M.A., Georgetown) and PETER KENT NAVARRO, Ph.D. MPA, (two Harvard degrees), O.B.E., had their day in court before a jury of their peers. Both verdicts were righteous.  Both BANNON and NAVARRO are disgraced former DONALD JOHN. TRUMP staffers, both refused to testify before Congress. Juries both convicted them of contempt of Congress. Lock them both up. 

Update: Convicted contemnor PETER KEITH NAVARRO, 74, now resides in a Miami, Florida federal prison, inmate number  04370-510, and is due to be released on July 17, 2024.

Both BANNON and NAVARRO falsely claimed to benefit from a "Colgate invisible shield" of presidential immunity.  As Politico reported:  Bannon and Navarro worked together on a strategy they dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep,” a plan to organize objections by members of Congress to electoral votes from states Biden won in 2020, delaying the process and buying time for GOP state legislatures to step in and appoint pro-Trump electors.  Both Bannon and Navarro refused to appear for depositions or provide documents to the Jan. 6 committee, even though the panel intended to inquire about a wide range of subjects that extended far beyond topics that might be covered by the confidentiality of their discussions with Trump while he was president. Though both claimed they were protected by immunity and executive privilege, the judges in their cases each rejected that argument, citing longstanding legal precedents that forbid “willful” defiance of a congressional subpoena no matter the excuse.

Lock them up.

From Politico:

LEGAL

Appeals court upholds Steve Bannon’s conviction for defying Jan. 6 probe

The ruling could send the longtime Donald Trump adviser to federal prison.

Steve Bannon appears in court.

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the criminal conviction of Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump, for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 House select committee, a ruling that could send the populist conservative strategist to prison.

Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress. But Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.

But a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the Jan. 6 committee — and that long-standing case law.

“Because we have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm [the conviction],” the panel ruled in a 20-page opinion.

The judges on the panel included Barack Obama appointee Cornelia Pillard, Trump appointee Justin Walker and Joe Biden appointee Bradley Garcia. Bannon can appeal the decision either to the full 11-member bench of the appeals court or to the Supreme Court. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decision comes after federal courts — including the Supreme Court — rejected a similar bid by former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro to stave off his own four-month sentence for defying the Jan. 6 committee. Navarro is currently serving his own four-month sentence in Miami.

Bannon and Navarro worked together on a strategy they dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep,” a plan to organize objections by members of Congress to electoral votes from states Biden won in 2020, delaying the process and buying time for GOP state legislatures to step in and appoint pro-Trump electors.

Both Bannon and Navarro refused to appear for depositions or provide documents to the Jan. 6 committee, even though the panel intended to inquire about a wide range of subjects that extended far beyond topics that might be covered by the confidentiality of their discussions with Trump while he was president. Though both claimed they were protected by immunity and executive privilege, the judges in their cases each rejected that argument, citing longstanding legal precedents that forbid “willful” defiance of a congressional subpoena no matter the excuse.


4 comments:

Lenny said...

Harvard MBA and look what he does with his time and money...shills for a crook. I guess some people wanna go down in history no matter if it's for something good or bad. Just get famous at all costs. Would have been better use of his time if he'd ended it all on live TV rather than be the muscle behind Nixon 2.0

Ed Slavin said...

My grandmother said, "some people want to be somebody -- ANYBODY!" My mom worked at a county college for decades, wryly repeating the academia trope that B.S. meant fullshit, M.S. meant more of the same, and Ph.D. meant "Piled Higher and Deeper."

Ed Slavin said...

Floridian slip. Corrected: My grandmother said, "some people want to be somebody -- ANYBODY!" My mom worked at a county college for decades, wryly repeating the academia trope that B.S. meant bullshit, M.S. meant more of the same, and Ph.D. meant "Piled Higher and Deeper."

Anonymous said...

Many advanced degrees outside of law and medicine are just so someone can pack more of a political punch somewhere. It's rediculous..