In the view of Steve Bannon’s defense lawyers, the contempt of Congress trial for the adviser to former President Donald Trump was over before it began.

Friday’s guilty verdict following less than three hours of jury deliberations was a “foregone conclusion” after pretrial rulings from U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols of the District of Columbia barred Bannon’s preferred defenses from being presented to the jury, attorney David Schoen told reporters outside the courthouse. Bannon sought to argue that he relied on executive privilege, past legal opinions from the U.S. Department of Justice and the advice of his lawyer in determining that he did not have to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.

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