Steve Bannon guilty of criminal contempt of Congress

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On Friday, after deciding not to testify or mount any other sort of defense in court, Steve Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress. The jury’s verdict, reached after less than three hours of deliberations, came one day after video of Mr. Bannon briefly appeared in a public hearing of the House committee he had snubbed. Investigators played a clip of him saying that Mr. Trump had planned to declare victory in the 2020 election, no matter what the results were. Bannon’s conviction was the first of a close aide to Mr. Trump to result from one of the chief investigations into the Capitol attack. Mr. Navarro has also been charged with contempt after defying a subpoena from the House committee and is scheduled to go on trial in November. Despite the legal wranglings that preceded his trial, Mr. Bannon’s guilt or innocence ultimately turned on a straightforward question: whether he had defied the House committee by flouting its subpoena. The proceeding came down to the simple fact that Mr. Bannon had “thumbed his nose” at the law.