Steve Bannon and a Cautionary Tale on Congressional Power

The caller determination by Congress to clasp Steve Bannon, the erstwhile Trump adviser, successful contempt, and the Justice Department’s willingness to instrumentality up the case, person had galore liberals cheering.

“This is simply a large milestone,” Maya Wiley, the erstwhile New York mayoral candidate, wrote connected Twitter. “#SteveBannon volition look a DC jury! THAT is existent & it matters!”

And it’s not conscionable astir Bannon, who is refusing to comply with a subpoena from the committee investigating the Capitol riot connected Jan. 6. Several different erstwhile Trump officials have been subpoenaed, and are already defying the requests oregon look apt to bash truthful — mounting up the likelihood that much contempt votes volition travel soon.

But Congress’s powerfulness to clasp witnesses successful contempt is simply a blunt tool, prone to abuse, and its past offers a cautionary acquisition for modern legislators anxious to deploy it.

On the greeting of Jan. 24, 1946, a pistillate named Helen Reid Bryan entered a proceeding country successful the Longworth House Office Building connected Capitol Hill. She was determination to attest earlier the House Committee connected Un-American Activities, known by its escaped acronym HUAC, successful her capableness arsenic the enforcement caput of a radical called the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, which provided wealth and resources to victims of the Spanish Civil War.

Strangely enough, HUAC had been founded successful portion to basal retired home fascism successful the 1930s. But it had rapidly been taken implicit by anti-New Deal, pro-segregation congressmen, who claimed that some the Roosevelt medication and the civilian rights question were being utilized arsenic covers for Soviet infiltration into American society. For years, unsubstantiated rumors held that the exile radical was a beforehand for the Communist Party, which is wherefore Bryan had travel earlier the committee.

Bryan arrived that greeting with 200 supporters, who organized a protestation outside. She did not, however, bring the organization’s records — conscionable a statement, which she insisted connected reading.

She had bully reasons not to cooperate. Being a communist was ineligible (though she wasn’t one), and determination were nary allegations that her radical was progressive successful subversive activities. More to the point, respective members of HUAC were outspoken supporters of Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator successful Spain, and Bryan disquieted that they mightiness leak the records to Madrid, putting thousands of governmental refugees and their families astatine risk. But those weren’t capable reasons to defy a legislature committee. HUAC refused to fto Bryan work her statement, and it voted unanimously to clasp her successful contempt.

The committee past called her boss, Edward Barsky, who appeared a period aboriginal and likewise refused to manus implicit the documents; truthful did the group’s full committee of directors, erstwhile they were called — including the novelist Howard Fast, who wrote astir the acquisition successful his memoir “Being Red.” All of them were held successful contempt. None of them had been allowed to person their lawyers with them during their testimony.

The House met successful April 1946 to ballot connected the contempt citation, and whether to nonstop it to the Justice Department. While wide and blimpish members clashed implicit the committee’s mandate and the exile group’s alleged overseas allegiance, the lone contented astatine hand, said HUAC’s chairman, John Wood of Georgia, was whether backstage citizens could disregard the volition of Congress.

“It is the intent of our committee to determine, erstwhile and for all, whether an enactment specified arsenic the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee has the authorization to defy the Congress of the United States,” Wood declared.

Even galore of HUAC’s skeptics recovered that logic hard to reject. “This committee is an established committee of this House,” said 1 of them, Clyde Doyle of California. “As agelong arsenic it appears that the committee had acted wrong the instrumentality arsenic we gave it to do, I shall consciousness compelled to backmost its lawful acts.”

The ballot followed quickly, and decisively. Of the 430 House members present, 292 voted for contempt; 82 declined to ballot and conscionable 56 voted against. Bryan, Barsky and the bulk of the exile group’s committee went to jail, immoderate for a year. For astir of them, their lives were over. Barsky, a surgeon, mislaid his aesculapian license. Bryan retreated to agrarian Vermont, incapable to find an leader consenting to prosecute her.

The greater consequence, though, was for the country. Having proven its power, HUAC adjacent went aft Hollywood, sending dozens of recalcitrant screenwriters to jail. Senators Kenneth Wherry and Lister Hill utilized akin threats to hound cheery men serving successful the national government. Joseph McCarthy utilized those tactics to animate his four-year reign of terror.

Over the adjacent decade, thousands of witnesses crossed each parts of nine — schools, universities, unions, churches, newspapers — had to measurement their consciences versus their livelihoods successful deciding whether to taxable to what came to beryllium known arsenic the Red Scare. (Among those indicted was 1 of my predecessors connected the Obituaries table of The New York Times, Alden Whitman.)

If you’re a conservative, this communicative astir apt sounds familiar. You whitethorn already judge the Jan. 6 committee has overreached, and is utilizing its subpoena powerfulness to combat a governmental war. If you’re a liberal, you mightiness deliberation that’s ridiculous — but it’s not hard to ideate the aforesaid happening happening to the near successful the future, erstwhile a Republican Congress and a Justice Department led by a Republican president could spell after, say, teachers who are accused of introducing captious contention mentation into their classrooms, oregon tech executives accused of moving excessively intimately with the Chinese government. House Republicans person already threatened to unleash a question of subpoenas against the Biden medication if they regain the bulk aft adjacent fall’s elections.

A afloat instrumentality to the darkest days of HUAC is unlikely. In 1957, the Supreme Court clipped immoderate of the committee’s powers, ruling successful Watkins v. United States that Congress could so clasp idiosyncratic successful contempt for failing to reply a question “pertinent to the question nether inquiry,” but that the question had to beryllium wide and constricted — that is, nary sportfishing expeditions of the benignant successful which HUAC specialized.

But the tribunal subsequently recognized, successful Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund (1975), that arsenic agelong arsenic Congress was pursuing a morganatic legislative extremity with its subpoena, it was immune to judicial intervention, and it made wide that specified goals could beryllium wide and open-ended; nary existent authorities needed to beryllium astatine hand.

None of this is to accidental that Mr. Bannon should not beryllium compelled to testify, oregon that the House is incorrect successful uncovering him successful contempt. But liberals should beryllium cautious astir celebrating the usage of blunt authorities powerfulness to execute what galore Americans spot arsenic overtly governmental ends.

On Politics is besides disposable arsenic a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Is determination thing you deliberation we’re missing? Anything you privation to spot much of? We’d emotion to perceive from you. Email america astatine onpolitics@nytimes.com.