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Even U.S. district court judge Carl Nichols recognizes that Bannon’s contempt conviction is likely to get tossed out, which is why he took the extraordinary step of issuing a stay of sentence pending appeal. When Bannon was subpoenaed by the J-6 Committee, Trump’s lawyer sent him a letter stating that the president invoked executive privilege and therefore directed him not to testify. Trump holds the privilege, not Bannon. Under law, Bannon cannot waive it or violate it. So, on advice of his own counsel, Bannon declined to testify. It was the correct advice. But at trial, Judge Nichols applied the...

Stephen Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison Friday for his defiance of a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The onetime Trump White House strategist was subpoenaed by the panel in September of last year after he failed to provide either the required documents or testimony as he railed against the committee. Bannon claimed that he was unable to comply with the committee’s subpoena due to executive privilege. However, the panel sought to speak to Bannon about events that occurred well after his short stint in the White House....

Notable Trump-supporting attorney Sidney Powell lost a key court battle on Wednesday when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed her suit against Dominion Voting Systems. The ruling opens the door for Dominion to continue pursuing its $1.3 billion defamation suit against Powell. In his three-page ruling, Judge Carl Nichols granted Dominion’s request to dismiss the case, noting that Powell failed to show that Dominion’s actions “constituted an abuse of justice.” An excerpt from the ruling reads: “Powell’s complaint fails to link her abuse-of-process claim to any act that Dominion has taken other than filing and pursuing its lawsuit. She...

A federal judge on Friday denied Steve Bannon’s request for a new trial and dismissal in the contempt of Congress case. “In the end, defendant offers little to demonstrate that the actual testimony be would elicit would have been material to the issues at trial. That falls short of his burden,” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee wrote. "Defendant also argues that his rights “to confrontation, to effective counsel, and to a fair trial” were also denied. But these arguments are underdeveloped. Defendant never explains the governing legal test for these theories, nor explains how the facts of...

Trump White House aide’s bid to delay case due to Jan. 6 panel hearings is denied. A federal judge on Monday eviscerated nearly all of Steve Bannon’s defenses against a charge that he criminally defied a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee, leaving the longtime Donald Trump ally with few options to fight the contempt of Congress case against him. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols also denied Bannon’s bid to postpone for three months the jury trial set to open next Monday, rejecting defense arguments that such a delay was warranted due to intense media coverage around the ongoing...

Steve Bannon suffered a setback ahead of his criminal trial when a judge on Wednesday ordered that he could not tell jurors he relied on advice from lawyers when he defied a subpoena to answer questions about the January 6 violence before Congress. He was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide documents and testimony to lawmakers investigating the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. Bannon's lawyers argued in a February filing that he had acted in good faith, based on the advice of veteran defense attorney Robert Costello, that he could not give...

The Justice Department has been ordered to provide internal documents associated with its decision to prosecute former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. This is a victory for Bannon, who maintains that he had a valid legal basis for refusing to obey a subpoena from the House’s Jan. 6 special panel. U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ordered the Justice Department to provide Bannon’s team with “statements or writings” that demonstrate how the decision to charge Bannon with contempt of Congress square with longstanding legal opinions of the Justice Department that hold that former presidential advisers are generally exempt from congressional subpoenas....

A federal judge has dismissed a felony obstruction charge alleging a participant in Jan. 6 Capitol riot attempted to prevent the certification of the 2020 Electoral College results. The ruling Tuesday by U.S. District Judge for the D.C. Circuit Carl J. Nichols, a Trump administration appointee, marks the second time in eight days the judge has issued such a dismissal. Nichols ruled in the case against Joseph Fischer, who works for the North Cornwall Township Police Department in Pennsylvania, that the obstruction charge does not stand. "Nothing in Count Three (or the superseding indictment generally) alleges, let alone implies, that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to provide former President Donald Trump's adviser Steve Bannon access to certain sensitive internal legal opinions or other related records that could potentially help bolster his defense against criminal contempt of Congress charges. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols told prosecutors they must produce "statements or writings reflecting official DOJ policy," including nonpublic opinions, that relate to "the department's policy on prosecuting or not prosecuting government or former government officials raising executive privilege claims or defenses of immunity."..... As part of his reasoning, Costello cited a number of prior...

A federal judge has thrown out an obstruction charge against a defendant charged with breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a ruling that could reverberate across hundreds of cases stemming from the attack on Congress. In a 29-page opinion issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ruled that ambiguities in the federal obstruction law required him to narrow the case against defendant Garret Miller, who is facing multiple felony charges connected to the attack. Under that narrow interpretation, Nichols ruled, defendants can be charged with obstruction only if they directly attempt to affect “a document, record, or other...

U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols has issued a protective order in Steve Bannon's criminal contempt of Congress case, effectively barring him or his lawyers from releasing to the public case material given to them by prosecutors. However, any evidence related to the case that is already in the public sphere or obtained by Bannon outside of the evidentiary discovery process is not subject the judge's ruling. ... ...Bannon and his team had asked the judge not to issue the order, citing what they argue is the public's need to understand the case. But prosecutors told the judge they feared...

Blowing Up The System SOURCE — DAILY BEAST Steve Bannon, who became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress, now appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him. Bannon is attempting to force investigators to expose who they’ve talked to and what they’ve said, peek into secret communications on the committee, and create a playbook for other resistant witnesses, according to several legal experts. “There’s no cost to opposing Congress if you can give Congress a black eye for even daring...

A federal judge just sided with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in his defamation suit against The Washington Post. . According to the federal judge, the Washington Post published an article with “at least reckless disregard of the truth that it had previously reported.” . From The Epoch Times: The paper said in its motion to dismiss that its correction erased any claims to malice, but U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols rejected that argument. “A newspaper’s own prior (and correct) reporting that is inconsistent with its later (and incorrect) reporting could certainly give the paper reason to seriously doubt the truth...

Newsweek reported: A federal judge Wednesday ordered that three defamation lawsuits of $1.3 billion each filed by Dominion Voting Systems be allowed to continue after allies of former President Donald Trump filed requests that they be dismissed. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and “Kraken” attorney Sidney Powell are all named as defendants in lawsuits that will proceed, alleging that each of these parties made claims without evidence that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the results of the 2020 presidential election by manipulating voting numbers. United States District Court Judge Carl Nichols, who is a Trump...

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday extended an order preventing the Trump administration from deporting a 16-year-old boy from Honduras under its emergency border declaration citing the coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Carl Nicholas in Washington did not rule immediately on the first challenge to a policy that has resulted in the rapid expulsions of hundreds of migrant children. Instead, he told lawyers for the government and the American Civil Liberties Union that he wanted to hear more about the case and make a final decision on the teen's fate in the near future. The judge did not set...

A federal judge on Thursday issued an order blocking New York state from turning over President Donald Trump's tax returns to congressional Democrats for now, should the House Ways and Means Committee request them through a newly passed New York law. The limitation will be in place, Judge Carl Nichols wrote, while allowing New York to challenge whether Nichols' courtroom in Washington is the proper place for this case, brought by Trump, to move forward, and in what form it could proceed. In a court hearing on Wednesday ahead of the order, Nichols said that his intention was to ensure...