SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The jury has found Steve Bannon guilty of criminal contempt.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Bannon refused to comply with the January 6 committee in Congress – what the verdict means in a moment. I’m Ayesha Rascoe.
SIMON: And I’m Scott Simon. And this is UP FIRST from NPR News.
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SIMON: That committee continues its work this fall. We’ve got the questions that it raised about what did and didn’t happen on January 6, 2021.
RASCOE: And President Biden continues to isolate with COVID-19.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The chances of serious complications for this president have been dramatically reduced by building up of his immunity and getting him antiviral drugs, the things that really make a huge difference in lowering his risk.
RASCOE: Tens of thousands of people are catching the coronavirus each day.
SIMON: So please stay with us. We’ve got the news you need to start your weekend.
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RASCOE: A jury in Washington, D.C., has convicted Steve Bannon on criminal contempt charges.
SIMON: The House January 6 committee asked Bannon for documents and testimony last year, and he refused to comply.
RASCOE: He is, of course, not the first prominent Trump associate to be charged and convicted of crimes, but he is the first one to be convicted of charges related to January 6.
SIMON: NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson has been on the case and joins us. Carrie, thanks so much for being with us.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Happy to do it.
SIMON: Bannon stopped working at the White House in 2017. What made investigators interested in him?
JOHNSON: A lot of things. Steve Bannon kept in contact with Donald Trump even after he left the White House five years ago. Bannon appeared at the Willard Hotel, along with other Trump allies the day before the siege on the U.S. Capitol. And on his podcast on January 5, 2021, Bannon said, all hell is going to break loose tomorrow. The House Select Committee wanted to know a lot more about all of that, but Bannon refused to talk.
SIMON: The jury verdict came in very quickly. I mean, it included lunch, and it was just a few hours.
JOHNSON: Really, it did. Prosecutors say this was a simple case. Look at the words in black and white on the subpoena Congress issued to Steve Bannon. He didn’t do anything in response to their demands for documents or testimony except float claims about executive privilege, which wouldn’t have applied to most of what Congress wanted anyway. Now, his defense argued his refusal to turn over materials might have just been a mistake or a misunderstanding about the deadlines. But that claim didn’t work on this jury, especially since prosecutors showed them social media posts of Bannon vowing to defy the subpoena and instead to, quote, “stand with Trump and the Constitution.”
SIMON: It is pretty rare for somebody to be prosecuted for contempt of Congress. Why did the government decide to take this step?
JOHNSON: The Justice Department says it’s all about getting to the bottom of what happened on January 6 and helping Congress pass new laws to make sure it never happens again. The DOJ says Bannon thumbed his nose at the Congress and thought the laws didn’t apply to him. And prosecutors said, we can’t have a civil society if people behave that way and there are no consequences. Bannon tried to argue the January 6 committee on Capitol Hill had political motivations, but the jury didn’t agree.
SIMON: Carrie, what are the potential consequences for Steve Bannon now?
JOHNSON: Bannon is going to be sentenced on October 21. The penalty for contempt of Congress is between 30 days in jail and a year in jail. But there aren’t a lot of cases to compare to this one, so it’s not clear how tough the judge might be at sentencing time. Bannon did not take the witness stand in his own defense. If he had, the judge might have been a lot more harsh with him. At least that’s what three legal experts told me this week.
SIMON: Carrie, you caught up with Steve Bannon and his lawyers just after the verdict. What did they have to say?
JOHNSON: Well, Steve Bannon had some tough words for the lawmakers who sent him a subpoena. Here’s what he told reporters outside the courthouse.
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STEVE BANNON: I want to thank the jury for the effort they did, the judge, particularly the court administration here, everybody. I only have one disappointment, and that is the gutless members of that show trial committee, the J6 committee didn’t have the guts to come down here and testify in open court. Thank you very much.
JOHNSON: So Bannon wanted to hear from members of that committee during his trial, but the judge quashed that idea. Prosecutors called a staff member as a witness instead, and now Bannon is vowing to appeal. His lawyer says there are an astonishing number of issues on appeal, including that Bannon was following advice from his lawyers, who told him he didn’t need to comply, and also some issues related to executive privilege.
SIMON: NPR’s national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thanks so much.
JOHNSON: Happy to do it.
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SIMON: The House panel investigating the attack on the Capitol wrapped up its summer series of public hearings with a prime-time session that drilled down on what President Trump was doing and not doing at the White House during the violent siege.
RASCOE: But Vice Chair Liz Cheney revealed another phase in the investigation is coming this fall.
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LIZ CHENEY: Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break.
RASCOE: NPR congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh joins us now. Welcome.
DEIRDRE WALSH, BYLINE: Hi, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So what additional evidence is the committee trying to get in this next round of hearings?
WALSH: Well, members of the panel continue to be really vague about what additional testimony and evidence they’re getting. We do know they want to follow up on missing text messages from January 5 and 6 from some Secret Service agents that were deleted. These could relate to an incident described in an earlier hearing when President Trump lashed out at agents in his presidential vehicle the morning of January 6. He demanded they take him to the Capitol, and they said no. Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the panel, told CNN that some involved in that incident were cooperating but are no longer talking.
But the committee is really facing a time crunch. It’s authorized through the end of this year. But Republicans are expected to win control of the House in the midterms, and they plan to do away with the committee if they take over in January. So any final report and recommendations has to be out by December.
RASCOE: Looking back at these hearings, they kind of set out to show this singular role that Donald Trump played in causing the attack on the Capitol and then failing to stop it. I mean, how complete of a picture have they shown of Trump’s actions? I feel like they have shown a lot.
WALSH: They have, but it’s still incomplete. The panel has presented a lot of evidence of people close to President Trump, like General Mike Flynn and former adviser Steve Bannon, and what they knew about the plans that right-wing extremist groups were organizing around January 6. We learned through testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, that President Trump was briefed by his security chief the morning of January 6 before his big rally on the Ellipse that protesters – his supporters – were armed. He then urged them to march to the Capitol knowing they had weapons.
But the committee has not really presented detailed testimony from firsthand witnesses about their conversations with the president on January 6. We did hear from his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who talked generally about, you know, conversations he had with other top officials, like Mark Meadows and Ivanka Trump. But he declined to detail his own conversations with the president, citing privilege.
RASCOE: What are we learning about the impact these hearings are having on voters’ attitudes towards Trump?
WALSH: Well, members of the committee say the political middle is really the target audience for their hearings. In an increasingly polarized country, that group is still shrinking, but it’s really important. I talked to several swing-district Democrats about what they’re hearing from voters. Initially, they were skeptical that the hearings could break through very much. Michigan Democrat Dan Kildee said he’s heard from Republicans and independents that they’re watching. He says the economy is still a top issue. But the threat to democracy, he thinks, is still important to independent voters and could be a factor in his race.
We have a poll from NPR/”PBS NewsHour”/Marist that was out this week that does show some movement among independents on the issue of opinions about January 6. Between December and July, the number of independents who say January 6 was a political protest dropped essentially in half from 30% to 14%. But those who are now saying it was an insurrection rose nine points from 43% in December to 52% in July. So we’ll have to see how those numbers move in the next few months.
RASCOE: NPR’s Deirdre Walsh, thank you so much.
WALSH: Thanks, Ayesha.
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RASCOE: President Biden remains in the White House this weekend as he isolates and continues to recover from COVID-19.
SIMON: That makes him the second U.S. president to come down with COVID and a prominent example of the current surge in coronavirus infections. NPR health correspondent Rob Stein joins us. Rob, thanks so much for being with us.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.
SIMON: How is the president doing?
STEIN: The White House says the president had a temperature of 99.4 Thursday night but responded well to some Tylenol. He still has a runny nose, is tired, and a bit of a cough. But his voice sounds better. And he appears to be improving since he started taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid. Here’s Dr. Ashish Jha, the COVID response coordinator, at yesterday’s White House briefing.
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ASHISH JHA: The big-picture point here is the president’s doing better today than he was yesterday. And yesterday, he had mild symptoms. Today he’s feeling even a little bit better. He’s doing well.
STEIN: But the president will continue to remain isolated while working in the White House. And given his age, doctors are keeping a close eye on him just to make sure he continues to improve.
SIMON: And, of course, as we noted, the president’s infection comes as the nation is going through yet another surge. How big is this wave?
STEIN: You know, so far it doesn’t look nearly as bad as like last winter. But the virus is spreading like crazy again. Johns Hopkins University says more than 134,000 people are catching the virus every day. And everyone knows the real number of infections is far higher because a lot of cases just aren’t being reported. And the number of people getting so sick they’re ending up in the hospital and even dying is on the rise again, too. Nearly 500 people are dying every day now. And the main reason is the latest omicron subvariant, known as BA.5, which spreads incredibly easily. Luckily, BA.5 doesn’t appear to make people sicker than the previous strains, but because it’s infecting so many people, more people are inevitably going to get seriously ill and even die.
SIMON: But at the same time, I don’t believe we’ve heard any calls to reimpose mask mandates or take other steps to try to keep the virus from spreading. How do you read that?
STEIN: Yeah. That’s right. You know, even though a big chunk of the country now meets the CDC’s criteria for imposing new mandates, health officials around the country acknowledge that there’s just no appetite for that sort of thing at this point in the pandemic. And because so many people have either been vaccinated or infected at this point, most people are just getting something that feels more like a cold or maybe the flu.
I talked about this with William Hanage. He’s a Harvard epidemiologist.
WILLIAM HANAGE: It’s like thunder heard at a picnic. It’s threatening but not directly threatening. In the same way, the virus is now somewhat in the background, and people are living their lives. However, the virus has not gone away, and, you know, it’s still going to be able to make some people very, very sick indeed. And it’s going to keep killing.
STEIN: In fact, a new projection estimates that more than 230,000 more people could die from COVID in the next year, even if another more dangerous variant doesn’t emerge. So experts are urging people to protect themselves, especially by getting more people vaccinated and boosted.
SIMON: And what’s the latest with boosters?
STEIN: Yeah. There’s a big debate going on right now about whether to expand eligibility for a second booster, a fourth shot. Everyone age 50 and older has been eligible since the spring, but younger adults haven’t been able to bolster their waning immunity. So many infectious disease experts are urging the FDA to authorize fourth shots for all adults. That would be the same shot that we’ve been using all along. At the same time, a new generation of boosters is coming this fall designed specifically to target omicron. And so boosting more people now could, you know, kind of mess that up, in part because people have to wait weeks, maybe even months, between boosters to make sure they work. So the FDA is struggling with all that, and a decision could come sometime maybe, like, next week.
SIMON: NPR health correspondent Rob Stein, thanks so much.
STEIN: Sure thing, Scott.
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RASCOE: And that’s UP FIRST for Saturday, July 23, 2022. I’m Ayesha Rascoe.
SIMON: And I’m Scott Simon.
RASCOE: Sunday on UP FIRST, an in-depth look at the planning and execution of the January 6 attack and what’s likely to come from the investigations into it.
SIMON: And for more analysis like just that, along with all the latest news, books and music, you can listen to Weekend Edition on the radio every Saturday…
RASCOE: …And Sunday morning. Look up your NPR station at stations.npr.org.
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