Exclusive — Bannon’s Lawyer: January 6 Committee ‘Never Wanted Steve Bannon’s Testimony’

David Schoen, Stephen K. Bannon’s defense counsel, told Breitbart News that members of the House’s select committee ostensibly investigating the events of January 6, 2021, “never wanted” his client’s testimony despite their issuance of subpoenas in pursuit of Bannon’s privileged communications with former President Donald Trump.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol describes its charge as a good faith investigation of “one of the darkest days of our democracy, during which insurrectionists attempted to impede Congress’s Constitutional mandate to validate the presidential election and launched an assault on the United States Capitol Complex.”

“They had an ulterior motive,” Schoen said of the select committee’s members in an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak. “They never wanted Steve Bannon’s testimony. If they had, they would have used the civil enforcement proceeding, because once they went criminal, they knew they would never get [Bannon’s testimony or correspondence documents].”

He continued, “So on one hand, [the select committee] had a staffer testify [that Bannon’s] testimony and documents were so important. If they were so important, then you go to a civil enforcement proceeding.”

Schoen said the select committee “knew” they would not get Bannon’s testimony after charging him with contempt of Congress.

There’s article after article written about “the distinction between civil and criminal enforcement proceedings among scholars,” Schoen remarked. “If you go criminal, you don’t get [the testimony].”

Schoen stated, “All of these committee members have made public statements – like Raskin and Schiff – ‘We’ve got to go get Steve Bannon. We have to set an example of Steve Bannon. We need others to get the message about what happened. Those things aren’t protected as a matter of privilege.’ These people making the rounds on the talk shows and otherwise for partisan political purposes.”

The select committee’s members’ refusals to testify violated Bannon’s constitutional rights to face his accusers and call witnesses, Schoen noted.

Schoen recalled how U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols granted the Justice Department’s request to quash subpoenas issued by Bannon’s defense team to members of the Select Committee.

“I said, ‘Fine, if you’re right in quashing the subpoenas, then dismiss the case or exclude all congressional testimony because you’re denying Mr. Bannon his right to compulsory process to call witnesses on his behalf, his right to confront witnesses against him — all constitutional rights — and his right to a fair jury trial, because we have no witness that has any decision-making authority coming forward to examine,'” Schoen said.

Bannon’s lawyer said that instead of testifying themselves, the select committee’s members “sent in a staffer who acknowledged she had no decision-making authority” who “couldn’t answer questions for the committee.”

The judge upheld the select committee’s members’ position that their communications were shielded from subpoena by privilege granted via the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause.

Schoen said the judge ordered an additional briefing on the defense’s position that Bannon’s constitutional rights were being violated by the select committee’s members’ refusal to testify as witnesses.

Schoen held that in a criminal case, a judge “must favor” the “defendant’s Fifth and Six Amendment rights to a fair trial” when in conflict with elected officials’ “invocations of the Speech and Debate Clause privilege.”

The separation of powers between Congress and the presidency also applies to the Justice Department’s prosecution of Bannon, Schoen said.

“The DOJ, just to get at Steve Bannon, absolutely tore asunder a vital fundamental constitutional principle,” he determined. “As you know, we have separate branches of government. So when the president or former president — and we know that a former president has the right under the law to invoke privilege — when [a president] invokes privilege, that means that privilege is presumptively valid. It’s not for Congress to determine whether it’s valid, how broad it is, or otherwise.”

He added, “The [prosecution] argued to the jury that Congress commanded Steve Bannon to ignore executive privilege and provide the documents and testimony. They said for Steve Bannon to say no to Congress, would be like telling the referee in a soccer field, ‘You can’t tell my child what to do.'”

The select committee’s position that Bannon must violate executive privilege by revealing private correspondence or communications with Trump is “absolutely false,” Schoen said.

If upheld, the select committee’s demand for Bannon’s testimony “elevates Congress to a level that was never contemplated in the Constitution,” Schoen concluded. “That makes Congress the ultimate arbiter of its own subpoena against the executive branch. So they were willing to really literally tear asunder a fundamental constitutional principle — separation of powers — and that’s outrageous.”

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