Steve Bannon on trial: Meet 7 key players in the Trump ally's criminal contempt of Congress case

A grand jury indicted Steve Bannon in November on a pair of contempt of Congress charges, just weeks after the House voted to recommend that the Justice Department prosecute him over his defiance of the nine-member panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The formal referral came after Bannon blew off October deadlines to respond to a House subpoena seeking records and testimony. In the face of that subpoena, Bannon said his conversations with Trump were covered by executive privilege.

But legal experts noted that, by January 6, 2021, Bannon was years removed from his official role as White House chief strategist in the Trump administration. And even if his conversations with Trump were covered, legal experts said, Bannon would have still needed to appear before the committee and invoke privilege on a question-by-question basis.

Ahead of his trial, Bannon reversed course and said he would be willing to testify after all before the House January 6 committee. Bannon attributed his about-face to a recent letter from Trump waiving a purported claim of executive privilege.

Prosecutors dismissed the offer as a "last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability." But Nichols, the judge, has left open the possibility of allowing Bannon to raise his recent offer at trial.

Bannon's legal team said in a court filing that the former Trump advisor "will testify," but as with any criminal trial, the decision of whether to call the defendant to the stand is likely to come down to the last minute. If convicted, Bannon faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 on each of the two contempt of Congress charges.

A Trump appointee confirmed in 2019, Judge Carl Nichols was randomly assigned to Bannon's prosecution in November.

At first glance, Bannon might have appeared to hit the judge-drawing lottery in having a Trump appointee preside over his case. But Nichols, who already had a record ruling against Trump, quickly dispelled any such notion.

In April, Nichols ruled that Bannon could not argue that he was relying in good faith on his lawyer's advice when he defied the House January 6 committee. The decision removed a central pillar of Bannon's planned trial defense — and it was just the beginning.

As the trial drew near, Nichols repeatedly rejected Bannon's request to delay the proceeding in light of publicity around the House January 6 committee's series of public hearings. Nichols stood by that decision even after Bannon renewed his request last week, pointing to a CNN documentary that aired Sunday and footage the House January 6 panel played earlier in the week of the Trump ally predicting on January 5, 2021, that "all hell will break loose tomorrow."

A onetime Supreme Court clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Nichols was a partner at the law firm Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr before his confirmation to the federal bench. Nichols previously served in the George W. Bush administration as a top official at the Justice Department, where he argued that the president's close advisors have "absolute immunity" and can ignore congressional subpoenas.

In the final year of the Trump administration, Evan Corcoran was nearly recruited to join the Justice Department as the second-ranking official in the US attorney's office in Washington, DC.

Corcoran is now defending Bannon against that same federal prosecutor's office.

A former federal prosecutor, Corcoran joined Bannon's defense team in November. On Monday, he led the Bannon team's questioning of potential jurors, and he has spearheaded some of the defense arguments in pretrial hearings.

But Bannon's case is not the only high-profile prosecution that Corcoran is handling in connection with January 6.

Corcoran is also representing Michael Riley, a longtime Capitol police officer who was indicted on charges that he obstructed the Justice Department's investigation into the January 6 attack by contacting a rioter and encouraging him to remove social media posts placing him at the scene of the violence that day. Riley pleaded not guilty and resigned from the Capitol police force.

David Schoen emerged in early 2021 at the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, where he delivered a spirited defense in arguments that were otherwise panned as meandering and ineffective.

At that trial, Schoen argued that the proceeding was unconstitutional because Trump was no longer in office. And he asserted that the trial, which centered on Trump's encouragement of supporters who overtook the Capitol, sought to undermine the former president's First Amendment rights to free speech.

By the end of the year, Schoen emerged once more to defend Bannon against contempt of Congress charges. Schoen has brought his bombastic style as he's pressed, unsuccessfully, to delay the trial and call lawmakers as witnesses.

When a judge last week refused to delay the trial and handed down rulings that limited Bannon's defense, it was Schoen who asked in frustration: "What's the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses?" Bannon's lawyer David Schoen asked at a pre-trial hearing?"

From the first weeks after Bannon's indictment, federal prosecutors made clear that they saw the case as simple.

"In our view, this is a very straightforward case about whether or not the defendant showed up," assistant US attorney Amanda Vaughn said at a court hearing last year. In court papers, she and another prosecutor said they expected the Justice Department to need just "one day of testimony"to prove Bannon's guilt.

The two prosecutors both bring experience with high-profile cases.

In 2018, Gaston handled the prosecution of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, who was found not guilty of misleading the Justice Department about his work for Ukraine while in private practice. The prosecutor spun off of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

Gaston was also among the prosecutors who weighed charges against Andrew McCabe, the onetime acting FBI director, in an investigation that centered on whether he lied to internal investigators about a media leak. In a February 2020 letter to McCabe's defense lawyers, Gaston and another top prosecutor in the US attorney's office said the decision not to bring charges came after "careful consideration."

Vaughn and Gaston are also involved in the prosecution of former Trump advisor Peter Navarro, who was charged in June with contempt of Congress after defying the House January 6 committee. Navarro has pleaded not guilty and is set to stand trial in November.

After representing Bannon in his dealings with the House January 6 committee, Robert Costello joined his defense team as he faced contempt of Congress charges. Costello has since withdrawn as a lawyer from the case to pave the way for his next role: witness.

Bannon's defense lawyers plan to call Costello to the witness stand to testify about "his interactions with the Select Committee and Mr. Bannon."

It is unclear what trial strategy Bannon's lawyers will wring out of the several rulings limiting his defense. But Costello is likely to address to what extent he and Bannon believed the deadlines to respond to the subpoenas were moveable and open for negotiation.

Nichols has suggested that Bannon could argue that he understood the deadline to be "malleable."

In earlier court proceedings, the judge bristled at how the Justice Department seized Costello's email and phone logs as part of the investigation into Bannon. The search for those records inadvertently ensnared the records of others who share Costello's name.

At a hearing in March, Costello wryly introduced himself as the "actual Robert Costello they were looking for."