Steve Bannon asked for his contempt-of-Congress trial to be delayed because the Jan. 6 hearings are getting so much publicity

• Steve Bannon was charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 committee.
• In a Wednesday filing, his lawyers asked for the trial to be delayed until long after the hearings.

The former Trump advisor Steve Bannon is asking for his contempt-of-Congress trial to be delayed because the coverage of the January 6 hearings were too public and could prejudice his case.

A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in November 2021 on two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.

Bannon pleaded not guilty, saying that issues of former President Donald Trump's executive privilege over materials relating to the committee needed to be resolved first.

In a Wednesday court filing, Bannon's lawyers argued that the coverage of the committee's hearings — and what they called the subsequent "media blitz" — warrants a delay to his trial.

They asked for the delay "due to the unprecedented level of prejudicial pretrial publicity" generated by the hearings, the filing said.

With Bannon's trial date set for July 18, there is a possibility that Bannon's trial and the committee hearings themselves will happen in close sequence.

A week ago, the committee announced it would extend its timetable to accommodate the July 4 holiday, with the earliest return date being July 11, NPR reported.

"When trial was scheduled, neither the Court nor the parties were aware of the June and upcoming July media blitz by the Select Committee," Bannon's lawyers, Evan Corcoran, David Schoen, and Robert Costello, argued.

Asking for the trial date to be moved to mid-October, they argued that Bannon's verdict should come from "evidence presented at trial, not on 'evidence' or 'findings' presented in congressional hearings, or on the preconceptions of jurors."

This includes material at the hearings from Bannon himself, they said. By way of example, the lawyers referenced the hearing of June 9, which was broadcast primetime on most major networks.

At that hearing, the panel showed a video of Bannon saying on his podcast on January 5: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow."

On June 15, Bannon lost an attempt to have the case thrown out on the grounds that the committee itself was invalid, arguing that it did not have the right number of members, as Insider's C. Ryan Barber reported.

The judge — the Trump appointee Carl Nichols — cited Supreme Court precedent to demonstrate that the committee's membership of nine was within the law.