The House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, passed the resolution with 229 votes in favor – nine of them Republican – and 202 against Bannon.
The contempt statement will now go to the Justice Department, which must decide whether to take action against Bannon, which could result in a fine or imprisonment of up to one year, although this is unusual in this type of case.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday that the Justice Department would review all documents obtained, but gave no clue about whether a decision would be made.
“The Department of Justice will do what it always does in such circumstances, we will apply the facts and the law, and we will make decisions consistent with the principles of the prosecution,” Garland told a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
Ahead of the vote in the plenary on Tuesday, the legislative committee investigating the attack on the Capitol unanimously approved Bannon’s contempt statement, with votes from two Republican congressmen who make up the organ, Liz Cheney and Adam. Kinzinger.
The investigative committee wants Bannon to testify because it believes he had “some prior knowledge of the extreme events” that occurred on January 6, when Trump protested near the White House as Congress won the election. Received to confirm. Now President Joe Biden.
Lawmakers based their suspicions on far-right statements from Bannon, Trump’s White House adviser, made on his podcast on the eve of the attack on the Capitol by hundreds of radical supporters of the former president.
“Will there be chaos tomorrow? A lot of people said to me, ‘If there was a revolution, it would be in Washington.’ Well, this will be your moment in history,” Bannon told the audience.
Bannon, who does not want to testify to Congress, backed a lawsuit filed by Trump to block the disclosure of certain documents related to the events, asking the committee to postpone his appearance until a court decision, which was dismissed. Given.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Trump issued a statement in which he said “the uprising took place on November 3, election day, January 6 was a protest.”
The former president continues to denounce without evidence that there was fraud in last November’s election, which Biden won. Before the January invasion of Capitol Hill, Trump made a controversial speech urging supporters to head to the Capitol. EFE
