Steve Bannon will get a boost from the House of Representatives as he fights a prison sentence engineered by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ).
The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), the House of Representatives’ internal legal arm, voted 3-2 on Tuesday to issue a legal opinion supporting the former Trump adviser’s fight to stay free. The group took action to support Bannon’s appeal in the wake of growing Republican support in Congress.
Bannon is due to report to prison on July 1 to begin serving a four-month sentence for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) now-disbanded January 6th Committee. Bannon has stressed that executive privilege does not compel him to divulge information to the committee.
Comprised of the Speaker and House Majority and Minority Leadership, BLAG operates at the staff level as part of the House Legal Counsel’s Office and is responsible for articulating the House’s institutional positions in legal filings with federal, state, and local courts.
“The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group voted 3-2 to file an amicus brief with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the lawsuit against Steve Bannon,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), members of the Republican bipartisan legal advisory group, said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
The statement continues:
The amicus brief, which will be filed after Bannon filed a petition seeking rehearing en banc, does not take sides. It retracts some of the arguments made earlier in the case by the House of Representatives over the formation of a special committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
House Republican leadership continues to believe Speaker Pelosi abused her power in forming the select committee.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during her weekly press conference at the Capitol on Sept. 30, 2022. (Maryam Zuhaib/The Associated Press)
Bannon expressed his gratitude to the group, but it is unclear to what extent, or at all, the proposal will help him achieve his goals.
“Chairman Johnson and House leadership have shown incredible courage in disavowing the illegally constituted J6 Committee and its activities/investigations,” Bannon said. Said Axios.
The House action coincides with a standoff between Attorney General Merrick Garland and House Republicans after his Justice Department announced it would ignore a Republican-led House resolution to hold him in contempt. The House passed the resolution on June 12 after Garland refused to turn over evidence from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into allegations that he concealed classified documents from Biden.
On that election day, the Department of Justice Claimed The memo noted that Garland would be protected from prosecution for contempt of Congress because Biden strategically asserted executive privilege over the recordings on May 16, 2024, before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees adopted contempt resolutions.
Republicans say the evidence would reveal Garland’s boss, Biden, is incompetent to do his job.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said she would force a vote Friday to find Garland guilty of substantial contempt of Congress, a rarely used tactic that would allow House protocol officers to bypass the executive branch and the Justice Department and hold Garland hostage. The House is also considering other options to force the Justice Department to act.
Another former Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, is currently serving a federal prison sentence for failing to comply with a J6 committee subpoena. In Navarro’s case, as in Bannon’s, the Biden Justice Department followed the recommendation of the Democratic-run House of Representatives to prosecute him for failing to comply with the subpoena.
This incident Bannon v. United States23A1129, U.S. Supreme Court.
Bradley Jay is Capitol Hill correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter. translation:.
