WASHINGTON -- The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection voted unanimously Tuesday on holding former White House aide Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress after the ally of former President Donald Trump defied a subpoena for documents and testimony.
Trump has tried to block the committee's work by directing Bannon and others not to answer questions in the investigation. Trump has also filed a lawsuit to try to prevent Congress from obtaining White House documents.
But lawmakers have made clear that they will not back down as they gather facts and testimony about an attack involving Trump's supporters that left dozens of police officers injured, sent lawmakers running and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's election victory.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Tuesday that Bannon "stands alone in his complete defiance of our subpoena" and that the panel will not take no for an answer.
Thompson said that while Bannon may be "willing to be a martyr to the disgraceful cause of whitewashing what happened on Jan. 6 -- of demonstrating his complete loyalty to the former president," the contempt vote is a warning to other witnesses.
"We won't be deterred. We won't be distracted. And we won't be delayed," Thompson added.
The Tuesday evening vote sends the contempt resolution to the full House, which is expected to vote on the measure Thursday. House approval would send the matter to the Justice Department, which would then decide whether to pursue criminal charges against Bannon.
The contempt resolution asserts that the former Trump aide and podcast host has no legal standing to rebuff the committee -- even as Trump's lawyer has argued that Bannon should not disclose information because it is protected by the privilege of the former president's office.
The committee noted that Bannon, who was fired from his White House job in 2017, was a private citizen when he spoke to Trump ahead of the insurrection. And Trump has not asserted any such executive privilege claims to the panel itself, lawmakers said.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of two Republicans on the committee, said that "Mr. Bannon's and Mr. Trump's privilege arguments do appear to reveal one thing, however: They suggest that President Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of Jan. 6. And we will get to the bottom of that."
The committee says it is pursuing Bannon's testimony because of his apparent role in the events of Jan. 6, including his communications with Trump ahead of the siege; his efforts to get the former president to focus on Jan. 6, the day Congress certified the presidential vote; and his comments on Jan. 5 that "all hell is going to break loose" the next day.
Bannon "appears to have had multiple roles relevant to this investigation, including his role in constructing and participating in the 'stop the steal' public relations effort that motivated the attack" and "his efforts to plan political and other activity in advance of January 6th," the committee wrote in the resolution recommending contempt.
The Biden White House has rejected Bannon's claims, with Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su writing to Bannon's lawyer this week to say that "at this point we are not aware of any basis for your client's refusal to appear for a deposition." Biden's judgment that executive privilege is not justified, Su wrote, "applies to your client's deposition testimony and to any documents your client may possess."
Asked last week whether the Justice Department should prosecute those who refuse to testify, Biden said yes. But the Justice Department quickly pushed back, with a spokesman saying the department would make its own decisions.
While Bannon has said he needs a court order before complying with his subpoena, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former White House and Pentagon aide Kashyap Patel have been negotiating with the committee. It is unclear whether a fourth former White House aide, Dan Scavino, will comply.
The committee has also subpoenaed more than a dozen people who helped plan Trump rallies ahead of the siege, and some of them are already turning over documents and giving testimony.
Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor criminal offense that can result in up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
The last time a person was charged with contempt of Congress was in 1983 during the Reagan administration. Former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle was held in contempt by the House and was indicted by a federal grand jury for refusing to comply with a subpoena from a House subcommittee investigating her management regarding the EPA's hazardous waste cleanup fund.
Even if the U.S. attorney in consultation with Justice Department officials decides to prosecute Bannon and officials who defy committee subpoenas, it's not guaranteed that the criminal referral process would move quickly.
"It still may take a serious amount of time," said Abbe Lowell, a top Washington, D.C., lawyer whose practice includes representing people in front of Congress and who is teaching a course on congressional oversight and investigation at Columbia Law School. "Maybe this is the way it has to be, but there's no really rapid way to cause somebody to testify and produce documents to Congress when they don't want to in a very rapid, efficient system since the days that the sergeant-at-arms went and arrested people."
The vote came a day after Trump sued the committee and the National Archives to fight the release of documents the committee has requested. Trump's lawsuit, filed after Biden said he'd allow the documents' release, argues that the panel's August request was a "vexatious, illegal fishing expedition."
Trump's suit seeks to invalidate the entirety of the congressional request, calling it overly broad, unduly burdensome and a challenge to the separation of powers. It requests a court injunction to bar the archivist from producing the documents.
The Biden administration, in clearing the documents for release, said the siege at the Capitol more than nine months ago was such an extraordinary circumstance that it merited waiving the privilege that usually protects White House communications.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was assigned Tuesday to hear Trump's lawsuit. She recently sentenced a defendant convicted of a misdemeanor in the Capitol riots to 45 days in jail against prosecutors' recommendation of home confinement, saying, "There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home."
Chutkan, a 2014 appointee of then-President Barack Obama, is a former Washington, D.C., public defender and white-collar criminal defense attorney with the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm.
Information for this article was contributed by Mary Clare Jalonick, Farnoush Amiri, Jill Colvin, Colleen Long, Zeke Miller, Nomaan Merchant and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press; and by Jacqueline Alemany, Tom Hamburger and Spencer S. Hsu of The Washington Post.