His attorneys cited “saturation” coverage of the televised hearings.
Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is asking that his criminal trial for contempt of Congress be delayed because the committee he’s accused of defying, the House Jan. 6 panel, is generating too much publicity through its high-profile public hearings.
Bannon’s trial on two misdemeanor charges for failing to comply with a House subpoena was set to open July 18, but his attorneys said in a court filing Wednesday that the trial should be put off until at least October because ongoing attention to the House hearings could taint the jury.
“Select Committee members have made inflammatory remarks about the culpability of President Trump and his closest advisers, including Mr. Bannon, and have broadcast to millions of people their purported ‘findings’ on issues that may prejudice the minds of jurors in this case,” Bannon attorneys Evan Corcoran, David Schoen and Robert Costello wrote.
“Those broadcasts have been repackaged and re-broadcast in countless forms, creating a saturation of the information sources available to Washington, D.C. residents. Under the circumstances, a continuance is warranted — to allow the effects of the Select Committee hearing coverage a chance to subside,” the defense lawyers wrote in their motion filed with U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols.
The select committee has highlighted Bannon’s involvement in a “war room” that Trump allies established at the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., where they helped direct Trump’s final failed effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election. They also played a clip of an episode of Bannon’s podcast, aired in the weeks before Jan. 6, in which he called for a protest at the home of a state legislative leader in Pennsylvania.
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Steve Bannon is asking a judge to delay his July trial for defying the Jan. 6 committee, citing publicity caused by the committee’s public hearings https://t.co/hkIb5Usjrm
— POLITICO (@politico) June 29, 2022
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