AFireVille
From former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, writing in Time magazine about Steve Bannon and criminal contempt:
The inimitable Emptywheel, after showing (many) receipts, comes to a different somewhat different conclusion. Specifically, she thinks past performance indicates that the good Mr. Bannon can be leaned on:
Congress has no authority to prosecute anyone for anything. Prosecution is an executive branch function, and that power is vested in the Justice Department. That is why Congress asked the Justice Department to prosecute Bannon for contempt – a crime punishable by a fine and imprisonment...
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...Recall, in August 2020, federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted Bannon and others for “defraud[ing] hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” according to a Justice Department press release. As a legal matter, that meant that a grand jury found probable cause to believe that several defendants – including Bannon – committed an egregious fraud. Before Bannon could be tried on those felony charges, former President Trump pardoned him.
It makes sense for Justice Department prosecutors to ask whether Bannon – accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors – would tell the truth about the January 6 insurrection. And because Bannon has demonstrated his disdain for the work of the select committee, helped spread election misinformation and fanned the flames ahead of the insurrection, it seems that he might be an unwilling witness and an untruthful witness. In that case, pressuring Bannon to testify seems pointless...
The inimitable Emptywheel, after showing (many) receipts, comes to a different somewhat different conclusion. Specifically, she thinks past performance indicates that the good Mr. Bannon can be leaned on:
...To be clear, the January 6 Select Committee doesn’t have the time to coerce some truths out of Steve Bannon, though it’s possible that DOJ could use any testimony he did offer as Mueller’s team seems to have done during their investigation, as a means to corner him about prior lies.
In any case, though his testimony helped convict Roger Stone (after which Trump pardoned the rat-fucker), whatever truths Bannon told during the Mueller investigation were useless. The truthful bits remained sealed in an unreleased 302 and grand jury testimony, of no use to the public.
Still, the overriding lesson from Bannon’s book of laughter and forgetting is that his past lies and changing loyalties can be exploited, if you have the time to really work on him.
Here's hoping Mr. Biden's version of the U.S. Dept of Justice takes all the time it needs.
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Unrelated but...Apropos of just about everything civic and citizenry....If you, like just about everyone everywhere, have pumpkins on the brain this weekend, go read our friend Danneau's latest post...You won't regret it!
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