July 24, 2022

Alan Dershowitz seems to only like to defend the indefensible. This time he's defending Steve Bannon, telling Newsmax that the longtime Trump ally has a good chance of getting his criminal contempt of Congress conviction overturned because the "judge took his defenses away." However, Bannon's attorneys didn't call any witnesses, and Bannon didn't testify, either.

"There was never a chance he could be acquitted for two reasons," Dershowitz said. "First, in the District of Columbia, 80%-90% of the people hate Trump or anybody who worked with him. No. 2, the judge took away all of his defenses."

Well, maybe Trump and his pals should work on not being so hated in this world. There is a reason people find Trump and Bannon repulsive.

"His defense was [Bannon] believed that [he] had an obligation not to speak to the committee because of executive privilege," Dershowitz said. "He may have been right, he may have been wrong, but the Congress should have gone to the courts first, and get an order from a court, and then he would have been properly prosecuted, but [to go] immediately to prosecution is 'Alice in Wonderland' justice."

Bannon hadn't worked for the Trump administration for years. He only worked in the Trump White House from January 20, 2017 to August 18, 2017. So, I don't see how he can claim executive privilege. Geez, this isn't hard.

Via Newsmax:

Dershowitz said the case "is far from over" and that Bannon "has a good shot" of getting the conviction overturned at either the appeals court or Supreme Court level.

I'm not an attorney, but Bannon's guilt can be easily explained: Was he issued a subpoena? Yes. Did he show up? No, he defied the subpoena. Is that illegal? Yes. Did Bannon know that? Yes. The end.

And that is why Bannon was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress by a Trump-appointed judge after he defied a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.

If he wins the appeal, then subpoenas will become irrelevant. Also, I don't recall Bannon asking for a change of venue since he's so hated in D.C.

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