SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon's willingness to testify to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection is seemingly "a ploy" in his forthcoming criminal contempt trial, according to one panel member.
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Rep. Adam Schiff, a Los Angeles Democrat, told KCBS Radio's Margie Shafer on Wednesday afternoon that Bannon's offer to testify is yet to materialize into anything concrete. Bannon had refused to comply with a congressional subpoena for months before his lawyer wrote to the committee late on Saturday, nine days before his contempt of Congress trial was scheduled to begin.
"We haven't even received the documents that we've asked for," Schiff said in an interview. "And it seems like this is really a ploy in his criminal trial more than anything else."
In court documents submitted on Wednesday, Bannon’s attorneys asked a Washington judge to delay Bannon's trial until Oct. 15. His lawyers, according to filings CNBC obtained, said that Bannon’s testimony and a CNN documentary airing on Sunday create "the very real risk of prejudice here" from potential jurors.
Judge Carl Nichols previously denied a similar request from Bannon’s lawyers on Monday.
Schiff and the House committee will hold its next hearing in prime time on July 21. Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic co-chair, said Tuesday that the hearing "would be the last one at this point."
"In the last one, at least the last scheduled hearing, we plan to go through the 187 minutes that that attack was going on when the president did nothing to stop it," Schiff said of the time former President Donald Trump was out of public view during the attack, and before he released a video telling his supporters to "go home now" after storming the Capitol.
The 11-term congressman added that the committee will also "explore that supreme dereliction of duty, all the efforts that were made to do something and his refusal to do it" in the July 21 hearing. Schiff was not optimistic Bannon would actually testify before then.
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