This decision was obvious. He was accused of defying a subpoena. He defied it. End of story. The prosecution’s case lasted about 30 seconds; the jury’s deliberation was similar.
How is a defense lawyer supposed to rebut such a clear-cut case? Given the lack of an insanity plea, and the judge’s lack of tolerance for political grandstanding, they presented no case at all. My guess is that they will argue on appeal that the judge ruled incorrectly when he disallowed some of their defense strategies. That must have been the grand strategy that caused Bannon to avoid a guilty plea.
Bannon’s personal, off-the-record defense was that “He wanted to testify under oath that at all times he was doing what he thought the law required him to do.” His lawyers were probably wise to advise against that, given that judges do not take it especially kindly when defendants try to lecture them on the law, especially with the legal theory that the law “requires” people to ignore subpoenas.
Bannon is betting he’ll get off on appeal or that Trump will be Prez by the time he needs to go to prison.
As I understand it, Bannon is the first person convicted of contempt of Congress since G. Gordon Liddy. Linddy was the only one involved in Watergate that refused to testify about it and as a result was sent to really rough prisons as punishment/motivation to testify. I’m hoping they give Bannon the maximum 2 year sentence in the roughest prison they can find.
He would already be in jail, but trump pardoned him re: “defrauding hundreds of thousands of people in an online campaign to raise funds for a southern border wall”
Typical Trump pond scum ~ apologies to scum …