Bannon indicted on contempt charges
WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was indicted Friday on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The Justice Department said Bannon, 67, was indicted on one count for refusing to appear for a deposition last month and the other for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena.
He is expected to surrender to authorities on Monday and will appear in court that afternoon, a law enforcement official told the AP.
The person was granted anonymity to discuss the case.
The indictment came as a second witness, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, defied his own subpoena from the committee on Friday and as Trump has escalated his legal battles to withhold documents and testimony about the insurrection.
The chairman of the Jan. 6 panel, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said he will recommend contempt charges against Meadows next week.
If the House votes to hold Meadows in contempt, that recommendation could also be sent to the Justice Department for a possible indictment.
“Mr. Meadows, Mr. Bannon, and others who go down this path won’t prevail in stopping the Select Committee’s effort getting answers for the American people about January 6th, making legislative recommendations to help protect our democracy, and helping ensure nothing like that day ever happens again,” Democrat Thompson and the vice chairwoman of the panel, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said in a statement.
The indictment is a victory for House Democrats, who saw dozens of Trump officials decline testimony and defy subpoenas during his presidency.
The charges support the authority of
Congress to investigate the executive branch and signal potential consequences for those who refuse to cooperate.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Bannon’s indictment reflects the Justice Department’s “steadfast commitment” to ensuring that the department adheres to the rule of law. Each count carries a minimum of 30 days of jail and as long as a year behind bars.
KENOSHA, Wis. — The jurors who will decide Kyle Rittenhouse’s fate will be allowed to consider lesser charges if they opt to acquit him on some of the original counts prosecutors brought, the judge said during a contentious hearing in which both sides could claim partial victory.
Rittenhouse, of nearby Antioch, Ill., testified that he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot two protesters and wounded a third during an August 2020 night of unrest in Kenosha following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.
Jurors are expected to begin deliberating on Monday after closing arguments in a case that has left Americans divided over whether Rittenhouse was a patriot who took a stand against lawlessness or a vigilante who brought a gun to a protest to provoke a response.
With a verdict near, Gov. Tony Evers said Friday that 500 National Guard members would be prepared for duty in Kenosha if local law enforcement requested them.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, is charged with intentional homicide and other counts for killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz.
Wisconsin law allows the prosecution and defense to ask that jurors be told they can consider lesser charges as part of the instructions they receive before deliberating. Defense lawyers can object to lesser charges, and in some cases Friday, they did. For those that they didn’t object to, Judge Bruce Schroeder asked Rittenhouse to confirm that he agreed with his attorneys’ decision.
Schroeder told Rittenhouse that by including the lesser charges, “you’re raising the risk of conviction, although you’re avoiding the possibility that the jury will end up compromising on the more serious crime. And you’re also decreasing the risk that you’ll end up with a second trial because the jury is unable to agree.”
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — A police officer testified he planned to give Ahmaud Arbery a trespass warning for repeatedly entering a home under construction before the 25-year-old Black man was chased and shot dead by neighbors who spotted him running from the property.
Glynn County police Officer Robert Rash said he spoke several times to the house’s owner, who sent him videos showing Arbery visiting the site several times between
Oct. 25, 2019, and Feb. 23, 2020 — the day Arbery was killed at the end of a five-minute chase by white men in pickup trucks.
Rash said he had been looking for Arbery, whose identity was unknown at the time, to tell him to keep away from the unfinished home. He said police had a standard protocol for handling people caught trespassing — a misdemeanor under Georgia law.
“Once we make contact with the person on the property, we explain to them the homeowner does not want them there, they have no legal reason to be there,” Rash said. He added: “I explain to that person, if you ever come back onto this property for any reason, you will be arrested.”
Arbery was killed before the officer could find him.
HAMPTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. — A man who traveled to space with William Shatner last month was killed along with another person when the small plane they were in crashed in a wooded area of northern New Jersey, according to state police.
The one-time space tourist Glen M. de Vries, 49, of New York City, and Thomas P. Fischer, 54, of Hopatcong, were aboard the single-engine Cessna 172 that went down Thursday.
De Vries was an instrument-rated private pilot, and Fischer owned a flight school. Authorities have not said who was piloting the small plane.
The plane had left Essex County Airport in Caldwell, on the edge of the New York City area, and was headed to Sussex Airport, in rural northwestern New Jersey, when the Federal Aviation Administration alerted public safety agencies to look for the missing plane around 3 p.m.
Emergency crews found the wreckage in Hampton Township around 4 p.m., the FAA said.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will hold their much-anticipated virtual summit on Monday evening as the two sides look to dial back tensions after a rough start to the U.S.-China relationship since Biden took office earlier this year.
The White House is setting low expectations for the video call between the leaders. Biden looks to stress that the two nations need to set guardrails in deepening areas of conflict in the increasingly complicated relationship between the two nations. White House officials said that no major announcements are expected to come from the meeting.
“I wouldn’t set the expectation...that this is intended to have major deliverables or outcomes,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who added that the two leaders would discuss how to manage the countries’ competition and cooperate in areas where interests align.
The meeting will be the third engagement between the two leaders since February. It comes after the U.S. and China this week pledged at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland to increase their cooperation and speed up action to rein in climate-damaging emissions.