contempt-of-court jan-6 steve-bannon
Can Steve Bannon avoid handing over the documents?
<p>Steve Bannon is on trial for two counts of contempt.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>because he refused to comply with a subpoena to testify before the Jan 6th Select committee.</p>
</li>
<li><p>because he refused to comply with a subpoena to hand over certain documents to the Jan 6th Select Committee.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>The Youtube channel Farron Balanced has offered a commentary on the trial. According to host Farron Cousins, if he is found guilty, then he avoids having to hand over the documents. The theory is that if he is sent to prison they can't do anything more. He has been punished for his contempt, and they can't do anything if he continues to refuse to hand over the documents.</p>
<p>Is this legally correct? Can't they issue another subpoena? And if he doesn't comply, that's a separate crime, for which he can be tried and punished again? Couldn't this happen indefinitely?</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/BTJ2PsF8Eq8?t=275" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/BTJ2PsF8Eq8?t=275</a></p>

<p>Congress could probably have sought to hold Bannon in civil contempt (which can incarcerate or fine him per day him indefinitely until he complies) and could probably seek relief in the form of a search warrant to be executed by third-party law enforcement, in addition to the criminal contempt remedy it is currently pursuing against Bannon.</p>
<p>Civil contempt is actually much more widely used than criminal contempt (punishing someone for a past violation of a legal obligation) in court cases. I don't know if Congress has failed to utilize it from a tactical litigation choice, or because it isn't available as a remedy for contempt of Congress.</p>
<p>A search warrant is not normally something that Congress would normally use, and the more common approach would be for Congress to make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice which would then execute the search warrant in connection with a crime other than failure to deliver documents, that is being investigated.</p>
<p>But a judge could probably order a search warrant as a remedy in this case where the criminal contempt does not provide a full remedy to Bannon's non-compliance. Remedies for contempt convictions can be fairly flexible compared to ordinary offenses.</p>
<p>A conviction for criminal contempt, if obtained, would more or less conclusively provide a probable cause basis for issuance of one, so there is no constitutional impediment to this remedy. Perhaps a search warrant could even be part of the penalty imposed pursuant to the criminal conviction.</p>
<p>This situation doesn't come up very often, so there isn't a lot of law directly on point.</p>
