Garland: DOJ will follow ‘facts and the law’ on whether to prosecute Bannon

Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would follow “the facts and the law” if presented with a referral from the House that former Trump White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon be charged with criminal contempt of Congress.

At an oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Garland gave little indication of whether the department intends to charge Bannon for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee if the full House approves the referral in a Thursday vote.

“If the House of Representatives votes for a referral of a contempt charge, the Department of Justice will do what it always does in such circumstances, we’ll apply the facts and the law and make a decision, consistent with the principles of prosecution,” the attorney general said.

The select committee voted on Tuesday to recommend that Bannon be referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution after he refused to comply with a subpoena for his testimony as part of the panel’s investigation into the riot that overran the Capitol.

The full House is set to vote Thursday afternoon on the referral. If it passes, it will be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to bring charges.

During the hearing, Garland said the department “recognizes the important oversight role” the select committee plays and touted the DOJ’s efforts to prosecute hundreds of people who broke the law at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The Justice Department is currently engaged in a complex and resource-intensive investigation, one of the largest and most expansive in our history: the investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” Garland said in a written statement. “The violence we witnessed that day was an intolerable assault, not only on the Capitol and the brave law enforcement personnel who sought to protect it, but also on a fundamental element of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, suggested during the hearing that federal prosecutors should extend those efforts to actors who may have instigated the mayhem on Jan. 6.

“I ask only that you continue to follow the facts and the law where they lead, because although you have rightly brought hundreds of charges against those who physically trespassed in the Capitol, the evidence suggests that you will soon have some hard decisions to make about those who organized and incited the attack in the first place,” Nadler said.