U.S. Capitol riot panel votes to hold Trump ally Bannon in criminal contempt

Asked last week if 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. The panel 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.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin said all the other witnesses who were subpoenaed are “either complying or acting in good faith as opposed to just blowing us off,” as Bannon has.

The committee is also conducting voluntary closed-door interviews with other witnesses who have come forward or immediately complied with their requests.

For some of the witnesses, Raskin said, “it’s a privilege and really an opportunity for them to begin to make amends, if they were involved in these events." Some of them “feel terrible about the role they played," he said.

Still, there could be more contempt votes to come.

“I won’t go into details in terms of the back and forth, but I’ll just say our patience is not infinite,” said Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the panel's other Republican, about some of the witness negotiations.

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, claims that the panel’s August request was overly broad and 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 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 violent siege of the Capitol more than nine months ago was such an extraordinary circumstance that it merited waiving the privilege that usually protects White House communications.