WASHINGTON -- The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced Thursday that it will move to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for not complying with its subpoena as it seeks to force former Trump administration officials to cooperate with its inquiry.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the panel will meet Tuesday when the House returns to Washington to vote to adopt a contempt report.
"The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed," Thompson said in a statement.
The panel has opted to give other former Trump administration officials more time to comply with its subpoenas.
Mark Meadows and Kash Patel were both scheduled to appear before the committee by the end of this week for closed interviews and are now expected to be provided an extension or continuance, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced.
Meadows served as Donald Trump's chief of staff at the end of his presidency and Patel served as chief of staff to then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Jan. 6.
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Because the delivery of former Trump deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino's subpoena was delayed, the committee has postponed his scheduled deposition this week, according to a select committee aide.
In a statement Thursday, the former president said the members of the committee should "hold themselves in criminal contempt" and that "the people are not going to stand for it!"
The committee -- seven Democrats and two Republicans, all appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- was created earlier this year after Republicans in both chambers voted against creating an independent commission modeled on the one that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Trump has urged his allies and former aides not to cooperate with the panel. His supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to prevent lawmakers from certifying Electoral College results and declaring Joe Biden the next president.
Democrats and the panel's Republicans have portrayed the attack on the Capitol as an attack on democracy and said that a failure to fully investigate the event could clear the way for future attempts to overturn legitimate election results, including through violence.
"We're moving ahead quickly to get answers for the American people about what happened on January 6th and help secure the future of American democracy," Thompson said in his statement Thursday.
Bannon, Meadows, Patel and Scavino are considered key witnesses by panel members as they investigate the Trump administration's efforts to overturn election results and interfere with the transfer of power. The decision to give Meadows and Patel more time to comply with subpoenas sent out last month indicates at least a minimal level of cooperation between the committee and two of Trump's former advisers.
The committee announced a subpoena Wednesday for another person it views as a key witness -- former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who sought to deploy department resources to support Trump's claims of voting fraud in the 2020 election.
Bannon's lawyer, Robert Costello, wrote Thompson on Wednesday that his client would not be providing information requested by the committee, citing ongoing objections from Trump's lawyer.
Bannon was not part of the administration on Jan. 6. He left his job as a top White House adviser to Trump in 2017. Several legal experts questioned whether executive privilege could shield Bannon from responding to requests for information about what happened during a period when he was not a White House employee.
The committee has said it believes Bannon has "information relevant to understanding important activities that led to and informed the events at the Capitol" on Jan. 6.
Committee members have argued that holding uncooperative witnesses in criminal contempt, which wasn't considered a realistic option for House Democrats to use while Trump was in office, can help them gain information quickly.
If the committee approves a contempt charge next week, the House must then vote on the matter. Once passed, the contempt referral would then be sent to the Justice Department. It would then be up to the Biden administration -- namely, Attorney General Merrick Garland -- to decide whether to criminally prosecute an individual for failing to comply with the congressional subpoena.
A successful contempt prosecution could lead to Bannon's incarceration, a fine, or both. He could face up to $100,000 in fines and a one-year sentence in federal prison. Still, a conviction on this misdemeanor offense may not necessarily result in the committee receiving the information it wants and a criminal prosecution could also take years.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who also sits on the Jan. 6 panel, said he expects the Justice Department to prosecute the cases.
"The last four years have given people like Steve Bannon the impression they're above the law," Schiff said during an interview for C-SPAN's Book TV that airs next weekend. "But they're going to find out otherwise."
Schiff said efforts to hold Bannon and others in contempt during the Russia investigation were blocked by Republicans and the Trump administration's Department of Justice.
"But now we have Merrick Garland, we have an independent Justice Department, we have an attorney general who believes in the rule of law -- and so this is why I have confidence that we will get the answers," Schiff said.
The administration has yet to comment on how it would handle a criminal contempt referral, but the White House has already taken steps to help the committee by deciding not to stand in the way of requests for information it is seeking from the National Archives on Trump and his aides.
In an Oct. 8 letter to David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden did not support Trump's assertion of executive privilege to block the release of information being sought by the committee.
"In light of the urgency of the Select Committee's need for the information, the President further instructs you to provide those pages 30 days after your notification to the former president, absent any intervening court order," she wrote.
Information for this article was contributed by Jacqueline Alemany, Tom Hamburger and Mariana Alfaro of The Washington Post; and by Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker, Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin, Michelle R. Smith, Farnoush Amiri and Zeke Miller of The Associated Press.