Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon may be planning on a “public authority defense” in his contempt of Congress trial. Bannon is pictured arriving for a hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 2022.
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Steve Bannon may be looking to point the finger at former President Donald Trump by employing a “public authority defense” in his upcoming trial for contempt of Congress.
Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, is facing trial in July. He was indicted last November for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Documents filed in court on Friday suggest that Bannon’s defense may argue that he is blameless because he was acting on Trump’s authority while refusing the subpoena.
Trump asserted “executive privilege” against January 6th committee subpoenas despite having left office last year. Bannon cited Trump’s claim as a reason why he refused to comply with the committee. However, President Joe Biden rejected Trump’s privilege claim and courts were not swayed by related arguments from the former president’s lawyers seeking to block the committee from obtaining records from the National Archives.
On Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion to stop Bannon from using evidence in support of the “public authority defense” and the related “entrapment by estoppel defense.” The motion noted that Bannon “was not subpoenaed in relation to his time as an Executive Branch official” and not directed by Trump to “engage in total noncompliance” with the committee while arguing to exclude the evidence.
The DOJ defines several types of “public authority defense.” One involves a defendant claiming to have honestly but mistakenly believed they were “performing the crimes charged in the indictment in cooperation with the government.”
In another, defendants claim to have “knowingly committed a criminal act but did so in reasonable reliance upon a grant of…