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“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke,” Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, said in a statement on Thursday.
Bannon was scheduled for a deposition in front of the committee on Thursday, and Bannon’s lawyer wrote in a letter the day before to the panel saying that his client will not provide testimony or documents until the committee reaches an agreement with former President Donald Trump over executive privilege or a court weighs in on the matter.
“We reject his position entirely,” Thompson continued in his statement. “The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt.”
With the committee officially announcing its decision to move forward with criminal contempt for Bannon, the next step is for the committee to hold a business meeting, which Thompson said would be October 19.
What happens next
The business meeting next week is the first in a series of steps needed to move forward with criminal contempt. In this meeting, the committee will adopt a contempt report, which outlines the efforts the committee made to get a witness to comply with the subpoena, and the failure by the witness to do so.
This report is then referred to the House for a vote. If the vote succeeds, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certifies the report to the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. Under law, this certification then requires the United States attorney to “bring the matter before the grand jury for its action,” but the Justice Department will also makes its own determinations for prosecuting.
Any individual who is found liable for contempt of Congress is then guilty of a crime that may result in a fine and between one and 12 months imprisonment. But this process is rarely invoked, and rarely…
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Source : cnn
