US justice on Monday selected the jury responsible for examining the refusal by Steve Bannon, a close friend of Donald Trump, to cooperate with the parliamentary investigation into the assault on the Capitol.
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His trial for “obstructing the investigative prerogatives of Congress” will therefore enter the hard Tuesday with the preliminary statements of the prosecution and the defense.
A discreet but very influential adviser, he played a crucial role in the election of the Republican billionaire in 2016, giving a resolutely populist turn to his campaign, before being pushed out the following year.
The two men, who remained close, had exchanged in the days leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the headquarters of Congress, according to the House of Representatives committee responsible for shedding light on the role of the former president in this blow.
- Listen to Vincent Dessureault’s interview with Victor Bardou-Bourgeois, researcher at the Raoul-Dandurand Chair’s Observatory on the United States on QUB radio:
To find out the nature of their discussions, the commission subpoenaed Steve Bannon to testify and produce documents. He refused, citing the right of presidents to keep certain conversations secret.
His refusal led him to be charged in November with “obstructing” the work of Congress. He had then promised “hell” to the Democrats for his setbacks.
Given the extreme political sensitivity of the case, it took a whole day to select 22 potential jurors, a number which will be reduced to twelve incumbents and two substitutes on Tuesday morning.
As his trial approached, Steve Bannon, 68, had turned around and agreed to cooperate with parliamentarians. The prosecutors had denounced “a last-minute reversal in order to avoid” a conviction and the judge responsible for the case wished to maintain the trial.
His lawyers also asked, in vain, for a postponement of the trial for fear that the jurors would be influenced by the broadcast of the hearings of the commission of inquiry, the next of which is scheduled for Thursday evening at prime time.
After more than a year of investigations, the commission will detail the day of January 6 as experienced by Donald Trump, “what has been done and what has not been done”, explained Sunday the elected Democrat Zoe Lofgren on ABC.
The former Republican president is believed to have done nothing for nearly three hours as his supporters stormed the Capitol, sowing violence and chaos, and forcing elected officials to halt certification of Joe Biden’s victory at the presidential one.