(21 Oct 2021) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4349457

The U.S. House is expected to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress. It's up to the Justice Department and the courts to determine what happens next.
As lawmakers ready a Thursday vote to send a contempt referral to the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, there's considerable uncertainty about whether the Justice Department will prosecute Bannon for refusing to cooperate with the investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, despite Democratic demands for action.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, (D) Maryland, is a member of the House select committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 riot. He says the stakes on the Bannon case are "enormous."
"The Congress of the United States under Article One has the power to investigate in order to inform our deliberations about how to legislate going forward. That's what this is about," Raskin said.
The outcome could determine not only the effectiveness of the House investigation, but the strength of Congress' power to call witnesses and demand information — factors that will certainly be weighing on Justice officials as they determine whether to move forward.
The Jan. 6 panel voted Tuesday evening to recommend the contempt charges against Bannon, citing reports that he spoke with Trump before the insurrection, promoted the protests that day and predicted there would be unrest. Members said Bannon was alone in completely defying his subpoena, while more than a dozen other witnesses were at least speaking to the panel.
"We are getting lots and lots of testimony, lots of people coming forward, and we are going to be able to tell a comprehensive story if we can get everybody's testimony," Raskin said. "It would be a serious problem if we were able to get everybody's testimony except for Steve Bannon and say four or five other people who refused to testify, and we're just not going to allow that to happen."
Still defending his supporters who broke into the Capitol that day, Trump has aggressively tried to block the committee's work by directing Bannon and others not to answer questions in the probe.
The contempt resolution asserts that the former Trump aide and podcast host has no legal standing to rebuff the committee, which noted that Bannon, fired from his White House job in 2017, was a private citizen when he spoke to Trump ahead of the attack.
"We're not out to jail people or fine people or whatever. We're out to get to the truth of what happened," Raskin said. "People cannot obstruct justice in this way. People cannot violate subpoenas of the US Congress. And again, we'll use the sanctions that are disposal not in a vindictive way, not in a punitive way, but in order to see that the rule of law is vindicated."
Lawmakers on the Jan. 6 committee are looking into every aspect of the riot, including what Trump himself was doing while it unfolded and any connections between the White House and the rioters who broke into the building.
The panel is also investigating how the protests leading up to and during the insurrection were financed, including the rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 preceding the riot.
"And what was the synchronization between the political coup that was targeting Vice President Pence? 'Hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence' to try to force him to return Electoral College votes to the states," Raskin added. "How was that synchronized with the violence that was unleashed against us on that day? We're trying to reconstruct this whole pattern of events, and we would hope that every American would be on our side in trying to figure this out."

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