Court upholds Bannon’s conviction

a federal appeals court Friday upheld the contempt conviction of stephen Bannon, a longtime adviser to former president Donald Trump, for having defied a subpoena from the Jan. 6 house select committee, a ruling that could lead to Bannon serving a four-month term in prison.

The house panel sought his testimony as part of its wideranging investigation into Trump’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election, and its explosive hearings two years ago previewed much of the evidence used against Trump in a federal indictment filed last summer accusing him of plotting to overturn his defeat.

The judge who oversaw Bannon’s trial had allowed him to remain at home during the appeal of his conviction and is now in a position to force him to surrender.

Bannon had fought his contempt conviction as he fought the initial charges during his brief trial in Us District Court in Washington in July 2022.

one of the arguments Ban- non raised to the appeals court was that his lawyers had advised him to ignore the committee’s subpoena — a tactic known as an advice of counsel defense. Bannon also claimed that Trump himself had ordered him to defy demands from the committee.

But in a 20-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the Us Court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit swept those arguments aside, upholding both the jury’s guilty verdict and the sentence imposed on Bannon by Judge Carl Nichols.

The panel wrote that even if Bannon’s lawyers had told him not to comply with the committee, the advice could not excuse him for having willfully and intentionally ignored the subpoena.

The panel also rejected, as a matter of fact, Bannon’s claim that Trump had authorized him to defy the committee. It cited a letter written by one of Trump’s lawyers to Bannon’s lawyers shortly after the subpoena was originally issued, noting that the correspondence “nowhere suggested that Bannon should categorically refuse to respond” to the committee.

David schoen, a lawyer who handled Bannon’s appeal, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

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economic adviser: US should reduce deficit by taxing rich

WashINgToN — President Biden’s top economic adviser said Friday that lawmakers should take advantage of a looming tax debate next year to try to reduce budget deficits by sharply raising taxes on corporations and the rich.

Under that plan, Biden would more than offset the cost of maintaining tax cuts for people earning $400,000 a year or less.

In a speech to the hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Lael Brainard, who directs the

White house National Economic Council, gave the most detailed explanation yet of how Biden would seek to shape what promises to be a multitrillion-dollar tax debate.

a batch of tax cuts signed into law in 2017 by President Trump is set to expire at the end of next year. It includes cuts for individuals at all income levels. Republicans built that expiration into the tax bill to reduce its projected cost to deficits and comply with congressional rules.

Brainard’s speech renewed Biden’s commitment to reducing taxes for middle-class americans and for raising them on high earners. But her remarks expressed more concern about growing debt and deficits than the president and his aides had previously demonstrated when discussing the looming tax debate.

“at minimum, we should avoid making the fiscal hole created by Republican tax cuts deeper, by fully paying for any tax cuts that are extended,” Brainard said, in remarks released by the White house.

“and we should use the 2025 tax debate as an opportunity to meet our national needs by raising revenue overall by asking the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share.”

Trump and his congressional allies have sought to extend all of the expiring cuts, a move that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget office said this week could add as much as $4.6 trillion to the federal debt over a decade.

Judge lets stand Wisconsin’s absentee voting requirement

maDIsoN, Wis. — a federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Democrats that challenged Wisconsin’s witness requirements for absentee voting, a ruling that keeps the law in place with the presidential election six months away.

The rules for voting in Wisconsin are of heightened interest given its place as one of a handful of battleground presidential states. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point, including the past two.

Us District Court Judge James Peterson tossed the lawsuit Thursday, saying the fact that the law has stood unchallenged in one form or another since the 1960s was “telling.”

“It may be debatable whether the witness requirement is needed, but it is one reasonable way for the state to try to deter abuses such as fraud and undue influence in a setting where election officials cannot monitor the preparation of a ballot,” Peterson wrote.

National Democratic law firm Elias Law group, representing four Wisconsin voters, had argued that the state is violating the federal voting Rights act and Civil Rights act by demanding a witness signature on ballot envelopes.

The voters argued that they have a hard time securing a witness signature because of health risk, age, and frequent travel overseas.

state law requires clerks to reject absentee ballots that are missing a witness’ address or signature. a Wisconsin judge ruled in 2022 that elections officials cannot correct or fill in missing information on witness certifications, a practice known as ballot curing.

The voting Rights act prohibits states from requiring a voter to “prove his qualifications by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class.”

The judge said the voters had not shown that either the voting Rights act of 1965 or the Civil Rights act of 1964 prohibits a state from requiring absentee voters to prepare their ballot in front of a witness.

Nine states require witness signatures to verify absentee ballots and three states require an absentee ballot envelope to be notarized, according to the National Conference of state Legislatures.

In Wisconsin, witnesses for most voters must be Us citizens and at least 18 years old. Witnesses for overseas and military voters are not required to be Us citizens.

In a random review of nearly 15,000 absentee ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, the nonpartisan Legislative audit Bureau found that nearly 7 percent of the witness certificates were missing at least one component of the witness’ address.

The ruling comes ahead of the Wisconsin supreme Court hearing oral arguments monday in another case related to absentee ballots.

In that one, Democrats are trying to overturn a 2022 court ruling that prohibited the placement of absentee ballot drop boxes anywhere other than inside election clerks’ offices.