Steve Bannon's contempt of Congress trial begins despite his attempts to delay it

WASHINGTON — Former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s trial on contempt of Congress charges began Monday after a judge rejected his attempts to delay it.

Bannon was indicted last year after he refused to answer questions from the Jan. 6 committee. He unsuccessfully sought to delay the trial twice, arguing, in part, that there was too much pretrial publicity around the case, including the committee’s televised hearings. Last week, the committee presented evidence that former President Donald Trump talked to Bannon on the phone twice on Jan. 5, the same day Bannon told his podcast audience “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow."

Still, both sides were able to agree on 22 qualified jurors on Monday before ending proceedings for the day. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said last week he was “hopeful” that enough jurors would be found who haven’t been paying close attention to the Jan. 6 committee hearings and don’t know much about Bannon so they could fairly decide the case.

Bannon, who had stonewalled the committee since October, had a last-minute change of heart this month as he sought to delay the trial, a decision his lawyer attributed to a letter from Trump that waived a purported claim of executive privilege. The Justice Department maintains that Bannon’s offer to testify was nothing more than a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability.”

Pretrial hearings largely did not go Bannon’s way and Nichols knocked out several potential defenses Bannon’s team had raised, leading his lawyer to ask the judge, “What is the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses?”

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