Four of the Five Men Who Defied the January 6th Committee Are Now Indicted Criminals

     House Republicans continue their attempts to discredit the work done by the House January 6th Select Committee, just this week seeking to attain documents from bombshell witness Cassidy Hutchinson. This is part of a broader scheme to ensure the rapist fraudster currently facing trial for 34 felony charges is shielded from any accountability, with House Speaker Mike Johnson and a convoy of other wannabes showing up to defend the former president at his New York trial.

     Their work has been hugely unsuccessful and, if anything, has caused more division among Republicans who hoped Johnson would be more aggressive in releasing January 6th footage (with faces blurred) and would somehow "defund" the Jack Smith special counsel investigation. The January 6th Committee report and referrals laid the groundwork that prosecutors like Smith, Fani Willis, Dana Nessel, and Kris Mayes have used to criminally prosecute those who sought to paralyze American democracy in 2020.

     These attacks on the long (politically speaking)-defunct January 6th Committee are nothing new. Over the course of its tenure, five people defied the committee in some form or another, with four being held in contempt, two being charged and convicted, three being charged for other crimes, and only one getting off entirely scot-free. 

     First up is Steve Bannon. Bannon is reviled for very good reason. The global fascist movement organizer who co-founded the alt-right Breitbart News site and served as the chief strategist for the Trump White House is set to go on trial in New York in September before Judge Juan Merchan on charges he defrauded donors to the "We Build the Wall" scheme. Bannon refused to appear before the committee on October 14th, 2021, and was held in contempt by a bipartisan House majority and charged by the DOJ in November. Represented by David Schoen, who represented Trump during his second impeachment trial, Bannon was convicted in July 2022 and sentenced to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine by Judge Carl Nichols. Bannon has remained free pending his appeal.

     Peter Navarro served as a senior trade advisor to President Trump from 2017 to 2021. He ignored two subpoenas to produce documents and testify before the committee and falsely claimed executive privilege that was at the discretion of President Biden on matters he wrote about in his book and discussed on cable news. Navarro was held in contempt in April 2022, indicted in June 2022, convicted in September 2023, and sentenced in January 2024 to four months in prison and a $9,500 fine. Peter Navarro is sitting in a federal prison in Miami as of mid-May.

     One individual who was never held in contempt but still defied the committee was Jeffrey Clark, the environmental lawyer who sought to politicize the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election. The January 6th Committee voted to hold Clark in contempt in December 2021 after he failed to comply with a subpoena to testify. Clark avoided prosecution by agreeing to testify and invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. However, that didn't stop Clark from being indicted in Fulton County in August 2023 and listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Jack Smith federal case in Washington, D.C. Clark also faces potential disbarment.

     Two more people were held in contempt by the House but not prosecuted by the DOJ: Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino. Meadows cooperated in the Jack Smith investigations of Trump and dodged voter fraud charges in his home state of North Carolina but ran out of luck when he was indicted in Georgia in August 2023 and Arizona in April 2024.

     Scavino, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and part-time author of Trump's tweets, avoided prosecution in the same way Meadows did: walking the line of minimal cooperation and defiance to create a gray area in the law. That doesn't change the fact that Scavino excitedly told former Trump attorney and convicted felon Jenna Ellis that Trump would refuse to peacefully transfer power. Meadows, Clark, Navarro, and Bannon have all been served karma by the law. We have to keep making noise until that karma comes for Dan Scavino.

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