On November 15, 2021, Kan Nawaday was featured on ABC News discussing the likelihood that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will succeed in prosecuting former President Donald Trump's political ally Steve Bannon. According to ABC News, Bannon surrendered to the FBI on charges of criminal contempt of Congress stemming from his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
“It will be a hard case for the simple reason that they rarely charge these. In the last twelve years, there’ve only been four criminal referrals from Congress to DOJ, and those referrals died on the vine,” Nawaday said. “This is the first time since the 1970s, by my count, that a criminal indictment has actually been issued by DOJ for contempt of Congress.”
An attorney for Bannon has repeatedly said his refusal to comply with the committee's subpoena stems from an assertion of executive privilege made by Trump.
“That’s a standard argument for all of these contempt cases in which somebody’s called before Congress who used to work in the administration. The issue for Bannon here is that the conduct that Congress is looking into happens three years after Bannon was a member of the executive branch and worked for former President Trump,” Nawaday said. Additionally, “the Biden administration has shown an inclination to wave executive privilege with respect to Congress’s inquiry into the January 6 insurrection,” he added.
Click here to access the segment.