trial after a revealing court hearing. prosecutors arguing that the air national guardsman is a dangerous flight risk with a history of violent threats. also tonight, more powerful testimony by trump accuser e. jean carroll. under heated cross-examination she told the former president s lawyer, and i m quoting here now, i m telling you, he raped me. whether i screamed or not. as for trump, he s campaigning in new hampshire tonight amid an escalating war of words with likely gop rival ron desantis. this as desantis is turning his fire at the walt disney corporation, blasting the company s new lawsuit against him as political. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. tonight, the accused pentagon leaker is behind bars as a judge decides whether he ll stay there in the leadup to his trial. prosecutors revealing very disturbing new details about the suspect and their case as they argued he should
condition as he recovers from covid. dr. anthony fauci is standing by live. we will discuss. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin our coverage tonight with the guilty verdict in steve bannon s criminal contempt trial. the former top trump adviser convicted on two counts of contempt of congress for defying the january 6th committee s subpoena. cnn s senior crime and justice reporter, katelyn polantz is joining us from just outside the federal courthouse here in washington. katelyn, give us the latest. reporter: well, wolf, steve bannon was convicted today, even though he had vowed this was going to be the misdemeanor from hell for the select committee. it was not that. by the end of the day, we had two criminal convictions of steve bannon. now, these were both misdemeanor charges, but congress writes the law, and when they wrote this law, they said that it would be punishable by a minimum
we re keeping a very close eye on the major breaking news we re following. the former vice president, mike pence, testifying today before a federal grand jury investigating donald trump and the events surrounding the january 6th insurrection. we ll have more on that coming up in just a few moments. other important news we re also following today, there was another very dramatic day in a new york courtroom as trump accuser e. jean carroll took the stand for a second day. her allegation that trump raped her back in the 1990s the subject of very intense cross-examination by the former president s defense team today. cnn s paula reid is outside the courthouse in new york for us. paula, some extremely heated exchanges, i take it, in the trial today. reporter: that s right, wolf. the whole trial is really on the line with this cross-examination. today the jury witnessed trump s attorney, joe tacopina, grilling
there s just a rule you don t charge him. then look at barr trying to justify something that just about everyone knows is bad because the trump people tried to stop it from happening. here s trump s new attorney general saying maybe there were good reasons for the attempts to fire bob mueller. elsewhere the report does say that mcgahn was told by trump to talk to rosenstein to complain about conflicts of interest mueller had and have mueller removed for conflicts of interest. there is a difference. there you have barr trying to say this was all about conflicts of interest as if there was no attempt to fire mueller. this is important. he s not trump s defense lawyer. he s the attorney general. the mueller report shows mcgahn called his own lawyer because he thought it was so improper that trump was asking him to fire mueller. let me read that to you if you want to remember for yourself. mcgahn decided he had to resign.
oversaw him and vouched for the probe. what barr knows as a veteran prosecutor is they don t make the call about surveillance anyway. prosecutors don t decide whether or not to issue a warrant. judges do. independent judges ok d all the surveillance you hear barr talking about now. if defendants want to challenge that they have a venue in court. it won t be in a private review overseen by mr. barr. this is basic stuff. even the fbi director hand picked by trump after the comey firing was duty bound to rebut barr s spying claim. do you believe that they are engaging in spying when they are following fbi investigative policies and procedures? well, that s not the term i would use. do you have any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or individuals associated with the campaigns by the fbi occurred? i don t think i personally have any evidence of that sort. there is another big claim from barr here. he s fine with trump using that