The House select committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection moved Thursday to advance criminal contempt charges against former White House adviser Steve Bannon, setting up a potential legal showdown with one of Trump’s longtime allies after he refused to comply with their subpoena.

What You Need To Know

  • Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon on Thursday refused to comply with a subpoena from the House panel tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, citing executive privilege

  • In response, the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the committee will vote Tuesday to recommend criminal contempt charges against the longtime Trump ally and former White House adviser

  • Should the House vote to pursue the criminal contempt charges against Bannon, they will then be referred to the Justice Department, who will decide whether to move forward with prosecution

  • In many ways, the committee's inquiry has served as a crucial opportunity for Congress to prove its own oversight powers; Members of Congress have vowed to restore the full might of the body's subpoena powers, which were regularly ignored during Trump’s presidency

Members of the panel say Bannon, a former White House strategist who was once considered one of Trump’s most influential advisers, has refused cooperation on multiple occasions, and failed to provide the committee with key documents ahead of their deadline.

"Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the panel's chairman, wrote in a statement. "We reject his position entirely."

In response to Bannon’s refusal, Thompson said Thursday that the committee will vote on Tuesday, Oct. 19, on whether to adopt a contempt report against Bannon. The measure – which appears to be all but guaranteed to pass the select committee – will then advance to the full House for a second vote.

If the House votes to pursue the contempt charges against Bannon, the Justice Department will ultimately decide whether to prosecute.

The escalation comes after Bannon, who briefly served as the White House chief strategist until August 2017, was subpoenaed for documents and testimony about his interactions with then-President Trump ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

An attorney for Bannon said that he would not appear before the panel at Trump's direction, claiming the information lawmakers were seeking is protected by executive privilege.

But legal experts are dubious that argument would protect Bannon, who was not in the White House in the run-up to the events of Jan. 6.

“The problem for Bannon is one he wasn't in the executive branch at the time of the relevant events,” Jamil Jaffer, the executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University, told Spectrum News. “So it's hard for him to claim that [the] protections applicable to a close adviser to the president, given that he wasn't in the executive branch itself, apply to him.”

Bannon left his White House role in 2017, eight months after joining the Trump administration – more than three years before the deadly insurrection.

“I do think for Mr. Bannon, who is the current person in play right now – it’s going to be a very tough road to hoe for him, because he wasn't in the executive branch at the time of the relevant events around the Jan. 6 insurrection,” Jaffer added.

The committee's inquiry is also emerging as a crucial test of Congress' own oversight powers.

Trump’s White House has routinely defied congressional investigations led by Democrats. In his own statement Thursday, Trump said members of the select committee should “hold themselves in criminal contempt,” adding that “the people are not going to stand for it!”

Bannon similarly defied a congressional subpoena during a GOP-led investigation in 2018 examining ties between Trump and Russia, but the House did not vote to hold him in contempt.

And though charges of criminal contempt could result in fines or even jail time for Bannon, it remains unclear whether or not Attorney General Merrick Garland would ultimately move to prosecute Bannon or other non-cooperative witnesses.

It would not be the first time such efforts would fizzle out after reaching the Justice Department. Contempt charges are notoriously difficult to prosecute, and the effort can be lengthy.

"We’ve seen it before: Congress has filed contempt citations with the U.S. Attorney's office and they haven't necessarily followed up on it,” Jaffer, who served as a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, told Spectrum News. “They're not required to. There's no law or procedure or standard practice of having to follow up on contempt citations filed by Congress.”

“It's completely the discretion of the prosecutor and ultimately … the attorney general and the president,” Jaffer added.

But should the Justice Department decline to move forward with criminal charges, Congress does have other means of enforcing the contempt citation.

Lawmakers can sue Bannon, or anyone else who chooses to defy congressional subpoenas, in order to compel testimony.

Another rare, but still technically possible option is for Congress to enforce its “inherent contempt power” – essentially, giving Congress the power to arrest and detain witnesses on their own until Bannon agrees to comply with the subpoena.

Congress “can seek to actually jail Mr. Bannon themselves,” Jaffer told Spectrum News. “They can send the sergeant-at-arms of the House to go out and to actually bring Mr. Bannon to Congress, and require the testimony, or hold him in in the facilities. They can hold him in committee rooms; Congress used to have a jail cell, [or] they can ask the DC jail to hold them. The Capitol Police do have a jail, they might ask to have that used.”

“So there's a variety of methods they have, if they really want to force it,” he continued. “Although, to be fair, it's very unusual for Congress use that inherent contempt power.”

On Thursday, Thompson said Bannon is "hiding behind the former president’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke."

The showdown with Bannon comes as the committee continues to broaden the scope of its inquiry. Members have so far issued 19 subpoenas, and requested thousands of pages of documents.

More broadly, the panel’s aggressive pursuit of Bannon’s testimony will serve as a litmus test of how far lawmakers are willing to go to compel testimony from defiant Trump allies. Members of Congress have vowed to restore the full might of the body's subpoena powers, which were regularly ignored during Trump’s presidency.

Former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel also failed to meet with the committee Thursday, though an aide said Patel is reportedly in "discussions" with the panel.

The committee also delayed two scheduled appearances from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, Trump’s longtime social media director, who were both scheduled to appear Friday.

Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, who also sits on the Jan. 6 committee, told C-SPAN that he expects the Department of Justice to prosecute the cases.

“The last four years have given people like Steve Bannon the impression they’re above the law,” Schiff said during an interview for C-SPAN’s "Book TV."

“But now we have Merrick Garland, we have an independent Justice Department, we have an attorney general who believes in the rule of law -- and so this is why I have confidence that we will get the answers,” Schiff said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.