The Dem-dominated House committee investigating the Capitol protest of Jan. 6 has decided to refer Steve Bannon for prosecution for criminal contempt after he defied the subpoena from the committee to testify this week.
Bannon was the CEO of Trump’s 2016 campaign and a top White House advisor until leaving in August 2017. It is not certain what, if any, connection he had to the Jan. 6 event, three-and-a-half years after leaving the administration.
Democrats said to CNN this week that Steve Bannon and three other Trump aides, including former national security advisor Kash Patel, were being summoned due to them supposedly having information about “exactly what Trump was doing” on January 6 during the so-called riot.
But these aides have not been involved with the hundreds of ongoing federal proceedings against the protestors. Moreover, Schiff and his Democratic friends have long targeted Patel and Bannon. The latter helped expose the use of “unmasking” by Obama White House officials that seemed to target incoming Trump appointees in the years 2016 and 2017. Schiff also went for Patel during the first impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, without any clear reason for doing so.
Schiff said to Wolf Blitzer that Steve Bannon and others “might go to jail” for defying their subpoenas. But the aides say they cannot be compelled to testify on any communications with the president, since there are concerns about the president’s right to give executive privilege. There is precedent for a former president being allowed to use this privilege, though the limits of it are disputed and might ultimately be decided in court.
Journalists asked Biden’s White House media secretary Jen Psaki this past Thursday whether she was worried about the precedent that removing executive privilege could create; she responded that she was not worried, since Biden had no plan of leading an “insurrection.”
The Dept. of Justice will now consider the committee’s referral, but the subpoena is possibly still headed to the courts. The committee is run by Dems, with anti-Trump GOP members Liz Cheney (WY) and Adam Kinzinger (IL) also being there.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
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