Bannon Lawyers Scream Witch Hunt At Three Ring Status Conference

(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

It was another weird morning in US District Judge Carl Nichols’s courtroom as attorneys for Steve Bannon did everything but chew the furniture in an attempt to persuade the court that a misdemeanor contempt of congress charge is actually the most important case since Marbury v. Madison.

Impeachment lawyer David Schoen, appearing for the defendant, reprised his impeachment performance, delivering a ten minute diatribe at high decibel during the status conference to determine the case calendar and hash out the terms of a protective order. In a joint status report yesterday, the parties proposed wildly divergent schedules: the government wanted a one-day trial in April, while the defense requested ten days, plus jury selection, in October.

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In support of Bannon’s position, Schoen shouted at length about all the discovery he intends to conduct, including subpoenaing various members of the January 6 Select Committee which issued the subpoena Bannon defied on the basis of “executive privilege.”

Bannon hasn’t been a member of the executive branch since November 2017, but no matter because Schoen intends to present a separation of powers defense anyway. Plus he intends to challenge the grand jury indictment on the theory that the jury instructions, which he has not yet seen, were defective. Also the Select Committee is defective because it has a non-legislative purpose, and Committee Chair Bennie Thompson hates Donald Trump, and Rep. Jamie Raskin said nasty things about Trump during the impeachment hearings, and this is all a partisan witch hunt. Blah blah blah.

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It’s not clear who this performance was for, since there were only 21 people on the call-in line at the commencement of the hearing and it’s not legal to record it. Even Steve Bannon is probably not brazen enough to use pirated clips of it on his show or post them online.

In the event, Judge Nichols compromised, setting a trial date of July 18, 2022, and taking the issue of the protective order under advisement.

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Citing Bannon’s expressed intent to try the case in public and turn it into “the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden,” AUSA Amanda Vaughn argued for an expansive order to both protect witnesses from intimidation and prevent them coordinating their testimony.

Baltimore attorney Evan Corcoran, who regularly appears before this bar, was substantially more restrained than his colleague. He pushed back forcefully on the accusation that his client would divert evidence to improper purpose, citing a consortium of media outlets pushing for greater disclosure as supporting the public’s interest and right to know. Corcoran also claimed that the government’s order, as drafted, would prevent him presenting staff emails or witness statements to other witnesses to verify them. And if, as the government counters, he would not be so prevented, then Corcoran argued that the order would do nothing to prevent witness coordination.

As the government was forced to tread a fine line, alluding to witness intimidation and not expressly saying that Bannon is a bomb thrower who uses the media spotlight to tell outright lies and call in troll storms, Corcoran was forced to circumnavigate his client’s allegations about corrupt Deep State prosecutors and a toothless judiciary.

Then Schoen jumped in to state as fact that internal Congressional Committee emails are “presumptively public,” citing exactly zero precedent. AUSA Vaughn pointed out that this was not the case, nor was it regular to have FBI 302 interview forms posted online by defendants.

In the end, the court seemed likely to split the baby here, too, issuing a narrower order than that proposed by the government and routinely agreed to by defendants in this jurisdiction.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Nichols urged the parties to confer and work out a motions scheduled. Then Schoen jumped back in to say that, although he’s not a betting man, he can almost guarantee that the court will be persuaded by his superduper motion to get his hands on the grand jury instructions.

As Trump himself tweeted about the Capitol Riot, “Be there, will be wild!”

US v. Bannon [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

Capitol riot, Carl Nichols, Crime, David Schoen, Department of Justice, Government, Steve Bannon