Bannon’s lawyers move to withdraw from criminal case following comments about Fauci

Defense lawyers for former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon have moved to withdraw from his criminal case after he appeared to suggest beheading FBI Director Christopher Wray and Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.

Bannon’s lawyers from the law firm Quinn Emanuel submitted a court filing on Friday asking a judge to delay the proceedings in his fraud trial so that he can find new lawyers.

A federal judge on Friday afternoon agreed to hold over a hearing scheduled for Monday until early December.

“Mr. Bannon is in the process of retaining new counsel, and Quinn Emanuel intends to move to withdraw. As a result, Mr. Bannon respectfully requests that the status conference in this matter be adjourned for three weeks so that he may formally retain new counsel,” William Burck, a former federal prosecutor and veteran of the George W. Bush administration, wrote in the filing.

Burck could not immediately be reached for comment.

The filing gave no reason for the sudden withdrawal, but it comes less than a day after the ex-Trump adviser discussed beheading Wray and Fauci in a video posted on social media, which resulted in a permanent suspension of his Twitter account and a strike on his YouTube podcast “War Room.”

“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci, no, I actually want to go a step farther, but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,” Bannon said on his show Thursday.

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England,” he added. “I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the program or you’re gone.”

Bannon and three others were arrested and charged in August with defrauding donors who contributed to their nonprofit aimed at financing a privately-built wall along the U.S. southern border.

Bannon, whose spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.