I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a bit of a sneak preview of what tonight’s January 6 Committee hearing will bring. Adam Kinzinger put this up on Twitter not too long ago and so I don’t think I’m off base to read meaning into it.
The focus of tonight’s hearing is going to be the unaccounted for 187 minutes between when Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Kevin McCarthy and said he “would put something out” and the time when he did a video in the Rose Garden calling off his rioting thugs.
We don’t know what happened in those three hours but we’re about to find out. Here’s a taste.
What was Donald Trump doing while the Capitol was under siege? Take a look. pic.twitter.com/9mz3P6C4qK
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 21, 2022
We certainly hope he is going to be criminally charged. If anybody has ever been more deserving of being criminally charged, I certainly don’t know about it.
This was all a show to Trump. I don’t think he knows that people died, or if he does, he’s numb to it. He only cares about death if it’s somebody he knows and then it’s anybody’s guess how much he cares then.
The man has zero business being anywhere near a public office, not even as a guest. Maybe that will be proven tonight.
The only thing certain is that the January 6 Committee will shine a spotlight where Trump doesn’t want it shined. I can’t wait to see what dark corners they illuminate. Trump is already in a place where polls show a lot of Republicans don’t want him to run again and Fox News has moved on. Maybe after tonight he’ll give up. We shall see.
I’m not making book on whether Garland is going to file charges against former guy mainly because I have yet to see him do anything worthwhile in his current position. Our country had an insurrection to overthrow the legitimately elected government and it’s not only Nero fiddling-Garland is trying his hand at the stringed instrument.
You’re the one with an actual legal education (even if you had too much integrity to actually become a practicing lawyer) but for an amateur like me this seems like what I think is called a Prima Face case. It’s really quite simple. Bannon was issued a lawful subpoena. It doesn’t matter he believed the issuing authority was beneath him, or not lawful and in any case any legitimate lawyer could have (and probably did) tell him it was legal. It also doesn’t matter if he thought Trump might invoke Executive Privilege. Without that formal (and it has to be formal – not just some fucking “maybe” tweet) declaration Trump’s claim wouldn’t exist. And being a FORMER President EP was no longer Trump’s to extend. Even if Trump were still Prez and issued a formal declaration since potential criminal actions were in play EP wouldn’t have been valid – even Trump’s SCOTUS still agrees on that! Again, any simple country lawyer could have told Bannon that but let’s be honest – he knew all that already.
The bottom line is that Bannon decided to play the same game Trump people played all through that disastrous Presidency – invoke the spectre of Executive Privilege to dodge questions even though Trump never asserted it in privately to them (as so many admitted) much less formally. But Trump was OUT when that subpoena was issued and Bannon blew it off. And when called out by the court for doing so he blew if off again!
And Trump can’t pardon him now.
However, he DOES have that pardon he accepted from Trump on his record which means when it comes to sentencing he doesn’t get the benefit of “first time offender” consideration. And in fact, all manner of his misdeeds are/will be fair game whether he’s been convicted on them or not when it comes time to sentence his ass!
But as I said this is as simple as it gets. Bannon got a lawful subpoena. He proverbially dropped trou and mooned the J6 Committee and the judge by ignoring it. Guilty as charged, because he literally has no defense other than to stand there in open court and tell the judge “I’m special and I get to decide what laws I will obey or not.”
At this point he’d probably hoping for a hung jury but he’s in DC now. And it will be clear to other jurors who the “holdout” is and word will get out and any such person who took a payoff or slimed their way on to the jury to hang it will have a very uncomfortable time with invesigators crawling up their ass.
This could get really interesting because even a year of prison is something Bannon ain’t cut out for. The funny part though is that like Michael Cohen he might go begging for a cooperation deal and have real goods to offer up in his proffer. But like Cohen, when it come time for his “Queen for a day” (which in practice can take days, even weeks) Bannon will try to hold back, and refuse to get into some matters, especially those that don’t have anything to do with Trump. And then like Cohen he will be fucked only much more so in Bannon’s case! He’s got to confess ALL and if he doesn’t then everything he did confess to is fair game for prosecutors. Who I bet are licking their chops hoping to be in on the case and putting his ass away for the rest of his life!
LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!