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Loudermilk to submit an amicus brief to SCOTUS to invalidate J6 report targeting Steve Bannon
By bellecarter // 2024-07-02
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House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk said he will submit an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to nullify the January 6 Select Committee's report against former White House Strategist Steve Bannon. The representative from Georgia's 11th congressional district asserted that the J6 committee failed to follow House rules, which mandated consultation with the "ranking member of the minority" for depositions. Bannon's attorneys argued the committee wasn't legitimate, partly because it only had two Republican members, and the House, which was then under Democratic control, defended itself in a 2022 brief. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, acting as vice chairman of the committee, does not meet the legal requirement for consultation with a ranking member since former Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected her, Loudermilk argued. The House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight is also crafting legislation to nullify all the work conducted by the J6 Select Committee. This development follows Bannon's request to the Supreme Court for a delay on his four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress, which he has been directed to commence by July 1. "Over the past year and a half, my committee has extensively reviewed and investigated the operations of Vice-chair Liz Cheney and Chair Bennie Thompson's Select Committee on January 6th," Loudermilk said. "We have discovered they were not entirely forthright with the American people and exhibited a disregard for House rules and transparency." Bannon defied a subpoena from the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. The Justice Department prosecuted former President Donald Trump's top adviser for contempt of Congress and a jury found him guilty when he failed to turn over documents or appear for a deposition to the committee, citing executive privilege. House Speaker Mike Johnson explained to Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that the J6 committee's work was tainted and used "nefarious" tactics to target political opponents such as Bannon and another Trump aide, Peter Navarro. Additionally, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana urged Johnson to support Bannon's legal defense and file an amicus brief in support of Bannon's pending appeal to the Supreme Court. Banks emphasized his backing for this action to delay Bannon’s incarceration. Meanwhile, Bannon has asked the Supreme Court to delay his prison sentence last week while a lower court works out his appeal. If the court declines to do so, he's supposed to turn himself in this week. (Related: Judge orders Steve Bannon to report to prison on July 1 to begin serving sentence for ginned-up "crime" for which no Democrat is ever prosecuted.)

Republicans push to keep Bannon out of jail

Bannon appreciates House Republicans for supporting his emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to stay out of prison. Republicans have previously pushed back in a report that Democrats labeled as "dishonest" on the work of the select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot for its focus on former president Trump, which Johnson on Tuesday described as "tainted." Republicans are also demanding the Department of Justice (DOJ) respect their subpoena for the recording of President Joe Biden's interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden's mishandling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency. The DOJ gave lawmakers a transcript of the interview but refused to hand over the audio. Johnson also announced the House would sue the DOJ. "There’s been an admission that they edited the transcript in some ways and we need to know in what ways," Johnson said Wednesday at a press conference. In a court filing in a separate case seeking the audio, the DOJ claimed that the transcript was accurate but that "filler" and repeated words were omitted by the "trained professional court reporter" who made the transcript, not an administration official. The transcript showed that at one point during the interview, Biden seemed unable to recall what year his son Beau died of brain cancer without prompting from aides, reinforcing concerns about Biden's age. The White House has said Republicans only want the audio to make attack ads, while Republicans have suggested the DOJ edited the already embarrassing transcript to protect Biden somehow. Some of the Congress Republicans also support a resolution by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to revive the House's long-dormant "inherent contempt" power, which has been used in the past to arrest administration officials for defying subpoenas. HuffPost asked House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who also refused a Jan. 6 committee subpoena, if it was odd for Republicans to dismiss Bannon's subpoena while insisting Garland obey their own. "No, because the Jan. 6 committee was such a joke," Jordan said. Check out VoteRepublican.news for more stories about the political ping pong going on in Congress.

Sources for this article include:

TheNationalPulse.com Malaysia.News.Yahoo.com Axios.com
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