House votes to hold Bannon in contempt for defying Capitol attack subpoena – live

It is official: the House has voted to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for defying subpoenas issued by the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

The final vote was 229 to 202, with all Democrats and nine Republicans supporting the resolution.

The matter will now be referred to the justice department, which will have to determine whether to prosecute Bannon, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump.

Testifying before the House judiciary committee earlier today, attorney general Merrick Garland said the justice department would fairly review any referral sent by the House.

“The department of justice will do what it always does in such circumstances,” Garland told the committee. “We’ll apply the facts and the law and make a decision, consistent with the principles of prosecution.”

The House vote remains open, but the resolution to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt has now gained enough support to pass the chamber.

As of now, 221 House members, including eight Republicans, have voted to hold the Trump ally in criminal contempt for defying subpoenas issued by the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

However, the vote remains open, so the result is not yet official. If the House passes the resolution as expected, the matter will then be referred to the justice department, which will have to determine whether to prosecute Bannon.

The House is now voting on a measure to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for defying subpoenas issued by the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

The vote comes after the House completed an hour of debate on the contempt measure, with all but two Republicans denouncing the proposal.

Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the select committee, accused his Republican colleagues of avoiding the truth and “performing for an audience of one,” meaning Donald Trump.

The blog will be watching the vote closely, so stay tuned.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of just two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, encouraged her colleagues to support the resolution to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for defying the panel’s subpoenas.

In her House floor speech during the debate on the resolution, Cheney argued that Bannon’s comments on his podcast the day before and the day of the insurrection were “shocking and indefensible”.

“He said all hell is going to break loose. He said, ‘We are coming in right over the target. This is the point of attack we have always wanted,'” Cheney said.

The Wyoming congresswoman lamented that many of her fellow House Republicans, who have staunchly opposed the committee’s investigation and the contempt measure, “now seem to have forgotten the danger of the moment, the assault on the Constitution, the assault on our Congress”.

“In fact, there is no doubt that Mr Bannon knows far more than what he said on the video. There is no doubt that all hell did broke loose. Just ask the scores of brave police officers who were injured that day protecting all of us,” Cheney said.

She concluded, “The American people deserve to hear his testimony.”

The House has cleared a key procedural hurdle in approving a contempt resolution for Steven Bannon, after the former Trump adviser defied subpoenas from the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

The House approved the rule to consider the contempt resolution in a vote of 221 to 205, which fell mostly along party lines.

The House is now beginning up to one hour of debate on the measure, after which the full chamber will vote on whether Bannon should be held in criminal contempt for defying the committee’s subpoenas.

The blog will be watching the debate closely, so stay tuned.

Joe Biden condemned Republican efforts to enact voting restrictions, describing such attempts at voter suppression as “un-American”.

The president was speaking one day after Senate Republicans blocked Democrats‘ Freedom to Vote Act from advancing, dealing another blow to Biden’s hopes of enacting national voting rights legislation.

“We have to keep up the fight and get it done,” Biden said in his speech at the Dr Martin Luther King memorial. “I know the stakes. You know the stakes. This is far from over.”

Biden added that his administration was also working to confront “the deep stain on the soul of the nation: hate and white supremacy”.

The president drew a historical line from America’s shameful enslavement of African people to Ku Klux Klan terrorism to the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville and the deadly Capitol insurrection on January 6.

“The through line is that hate never goes away,” Biden said. “It only hides.”