Steve Bannon's new lawyer went from almost joining Trump's DOJ to defending the bombastic GOP operative and January 6 defendants too

• Steve Bannon's defense lawyer almost took a top role in the office now handling January 6 cases.
• Evan Corcoran is also representing a Capitol police officer accused of obstructing DOJ's investigation.

When Steve Bannon stepped outside a federal courthouse Monday and pledged to make his criminal prosecution the "misdemeanor from hell" for the Biden administration, he was flanked by a lawyer who had previously defended former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment.

But it wasn't that lawyer, David Schoen, who did the talking days later during an initial court hearing before the Trump-appointed judge presiding over Bannon's case. It was instead M. Evan Corcoran, a lower-profile defense lawyer with his own notable backstory and caseload connected to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

In early 2020, Corcoran nearly took a top role in the US attorney's office in Washington, DC, which is now prosecuting Bannon on contempt of Congress charges over the Trump ally's refusal to comply with a subpoena from the special House committee investigating the Capitol siege. Corcoran was in line to become the second-ranking official in the federal prosecutor's office under Tim Shea, a top Trump-era Justice Department official whom then-Attorney General William Barr had appointed as the acting US attorney in Washington.

Shea arrived as an outsider and turned to Corcoran, a law school friend who in the 1990s had served as a federal prosecutor in the office, for the role of first assistant US attorney, according to people familiar with the offer. But, within months, Shea was forced out of the US attorney role amid outcry over the Justice Department leadership's interventions in the prosecutions of Roger Stone and former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn.

Corcoran's would-be return to the office fizzled with Shea's exit, the National Law Journal reported. Shea spent the remainder of the Trump administration as the acting head of the Drug Enforcement administration.

Beyond Bannon, a notable January 6 case

A year later, Corcoran is on the other side defending Bannon against the federal prosecutor's office in perhaps its high-profile pending case.

Corcoran is also representing the longtime Capitol police officer who was indicted last month 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. His client, Officer Michael Riley, pleaded not guilty last month and resigned from the Capitol police force.

In a separate January 6-related case, Corcoran is representing Frank Scavo, a Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to participating in the Capitol riot. Scavo is set to be sentenced on November 22.

Corcoran, a Baltimore-based partner at the firm Silverman Thompson Slutkin White, declined to comment.

At a court hearing Thursday in Bannon's case, Corcoran pushed back against a federal prosecutor's request for Judge Carl Nichols to set a trial date. Assistant US attorney Amanda Vaugh described Bannon's prosecution as a "very straightforward case about whether or not the defendant showed up" for closed-door questioning from the special House committee.

"So we don't see any reason to delay setting a trial date in this matter," she said.

Corcoran said the case involves "complex constitutional issues" and that the defense team hoped to obtain documents from Congress and the Biden administration in connection with the case.

"I understand that there's some suggestion that the case ought to be accelerated, or it ought to be handled in a more narrow fashion, but we don't agree with that," Corcoran said. "The key here is our ability to identify the documents and the witnesses that will allow us to present a defense for Mr. Bannon."

At another point, Corcoran noted that the court has been strained by the pandemic-related delays of trials and the deluge of prosecutions stemming from the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

"A historic number of criminal prosecutions are in the court. As a very practical matter, we're not asking to cut in line, And we understand that that is something that affects the court's docket," Corcoran said.

Blocking off dates for a trial next year, Corcoran added, "would have a compounding fact on many other people, many other accused, who are seeking their day in court but, for reasons that are totally out of the control of the court, haven't been able to get there."

Nichols appeared to bristle at the notion he needed help managing his docket.

"I can manage the interplay between this case and the other cases on my docket," he said, "in a way that will ensure that no one will not have their day in court."