Today, Explained - Steve Bannon in contempt

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

The House is holding Steve Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena as part of its January 6 investigation. Journalist Andrea Bernstein explains. Today’s show was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. The Select Committee is meeting this evening to consider a report on a resolution recommending that the House of Representatives find Stephen K. Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. Steve Bannon's not having the best week. He's trying to hide behind some presidential privileges,

but he's running into this one problem. He was never president. The Select Committee has issued quite a few subpoenas and reached out to quite a few witnesses. And so far as we know, there is only one witness that has rebuffed them in totality, and that is Steve Bannon. And this is Andrea Bernstein, former public radio reporter currently working on a new show all about the January 6th insurrection. Today, she's going to help us understand why the House Select Committee is holding Steve Bannon in contempt

and what they want to get from him to begin with. What we know about Steve Bannon is that he had a podcast called War Room. War Room. Pandemic. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. It's Tuesday, the 5th of January, the year of our Lord, 2021. We are on the eve of one of the most important days in American history. And he, on the day before the rally, made these very provocative and seemingly foreshadowing remarks suggesting that he had knowledge of some kind of planned violence. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this.

All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. OK, it's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is strap in. And what we've learned from the public statements that they've issued and the documents that the select committee has released in the last couple of days is that they're wondering if there was another kind of war room, an actual war room at a hotel in Washington, D.C., the Willard Hotel. We know that Roger Stone, the former advisor to the president who was convicted of lying to Congress and subsequently pardoned by Trump, was at that hotel. We know at one point the former president's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was at that hotel. We know that some of the rally organizers were at that hotel. We know that some of the rally organizers were at that hotel. And we know that some of the insurrectionists who have been accused with some of the most organized conspiracies

surrounding January 6th were at that hotel. Mr. Bannon was in the war room at the Willard on January 6th. He also appears to have detailed knowledge regarding the president's efforts to sell millions of Americans the fraud that the election was stolen. They have said, their lawyer has said in court, that they were there to provide security to Roger Stone. Some of them actually left that post to ride on golf carts over to the Capitol to try and join the riot as it was in progress. So the question of what happened at the Willer, who said what to whom, was anybody speaking to the White House, appears to be very much at the top of the mind of the select committee. On January 6th, a mob breached the security perimeter of our Capitol, assaulted and injured more than 140 police officers, engaged in hand-to-hand violence over an extended period,

and invaded and occupied the United States Capitol building, all in an effort to halt the lawful counting of electoral votes and reverse the results of the 2020 election. I think a lot of people's last recollection of Steve Bannon could potentially be, you know, his unglamorous firing from the Trump White House and then his sort of disappearance into right wing obscurity.

But was he still close with the president in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th? I mean, it's true. Steve Bannon was fired by an angry White House. Bannon's departure comes at the end of a brutal week for the administration. I think there's blame on both sides. But what may have been the last straw for Bannon, a controversial interview the former Breitbart News executive gave to the liberal publication American Prospect, undermining the president's North Korea strategy,

saying there's no military option to deal with the threat. But, you know, most people don't actually leave Trump's orbit. This is a pattern. He fires, keeps them around, brings them back. So it's not an uncommon pattern. in New York of being involved in a fraud scheme of actually stealing money from donors that were being solicited to contribute to the construction of the border wall. Mr. Bannon and three other men are accused of diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from an online fundraising campaign to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. You may remember that was perhaps Mr. Trump's single biggest campaign pledge. The money was allegedly used for personal expenses. So he was accused of that. He denied any wrongdoing. In the waning hours of Trump's presidency, he was pardoned. So what that means

is on January 6th, he still was operating under the cloud of this impending federal fraud prosecution. So while he was being accused of violating fraud laws, he was also making these comments that seemed to have perhaps induced people to participate in a violent riot at the Capitol. And that is what the committee has been asking questions about. We obviously don't know all the answers because of Bannon's refusal to testify in any way about any of this. Tell me about the timeline there. When did the committee first reach out to Bannon? What was his response and how has that progressed? So the committee issued its subpoenas in September. What we can see from the sum total of the witnesses that they've subpoenaed,

the documents that they've requested, is that they are really trying to understand what happened in the days leading up to January 6. And the first tranche of witnesses that they reached out to had knowledge of President Trump and of possibly his connections to the rally in March, if any. So they issued subpoenas to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, to Dan Scavino, who was in charge of social media at the White House, and also to Steve Bannon. They also have requested to speak

to Assistant Attorney General Clark, who was involved in what looked like as a very near takeover of the Justice Department and trying to get the Justice Department to urge state legislators to throw out states of electors and to a number of rally organizers. And a number of the other witnesses, for example, Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, who is an administration official in various roles, have been described by the committee as engaging with the committee. Bannon said, no way. I can't testify because there's privilege. And this brings us back to what I said at the top of the show. It's kind of funny to hear that Steve Bannon, a guy who was fired from the White House in 2017 and was relegated to a lonely life of wearing many shirts at once, is now claiming executive privilege.

How does that work, Andrea? There are several questions that have been raised about this by the select committee. For folks watching at home this evening, what would happen to you if you did what Mr. Bannon is doing? If you were a material witness in a criminal prosecution or some other lawsuit, what would happen if you refused to show up? Do you think you'd be able to just go about your business? We all know the answer to that. First one, as you say, is Bannon has not worked in the White House for years. He left early in the Trump presidency. So there is that concern. Here's somebody who hasn't worked for the White House. What is he doing exerting executive privilege? The second one is the things that he

is being asked about were not official functions. However, one of the very, very important things that is being a little lost in all of this is that the committee has also asked Bannon about lots of other communications that don't involve former President Trump at all. They involve rally organizers. They involve administration officials. They involve this so-called circle of people, perhaps a kind of a war room, as Representative Liz Cheney has described it, at the Willard Hotel. So by saying I am not giving any information about anything, what Bannon is doing is claiming that he has absolute immunity from testifying. And so far as any legal experts that I have spoken to have said and can determine, such a thing does not exist for a private citizen. And that is what is going on here, is that there is a vast drove of information that Steve Bannon could theoretically go to the,

he could go to the committee and he could say, look, I'm not talking about my conversations with President Trump until we have more legal clarity on this, but I will give you this other information that you seek. And if he doesn't? Well, he didn't. So he now faces a Justice Department criminal review of his activities and possible criminal consequences. As in, Steve Bannon might go to jail. He could face jail time. He could face a fine. The Justice Department has said it will handle this referral as it does every one and evaluate the evidence and take action accordingly, which is sort of, you know, kind of a non-statement.

But he is, it looks like, going to be under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department again by week's end. The guy who actually maybe can claim executive privilege, to no one's surprise, he's giving it a shot. More on that guy in a pocket. into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained,

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or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Former President Donald Trump is suing the january 6th investigative committee and the national archives to block the release of his white house records related to the capital attack but that hasn't stopped the house select committee's pressure on the former president and close allies to divulge more information of its probe of the deadly insurrection. So Andrea, I think we covered how executive privilege might or more likely not extend to Steve Bannon, but let's talk about how it applies to the former president.

And he is claiming executive privilege with respect to this January 6th committee, right? So Donald Trump has sued the committee with respect to something else, not with respect to Steve Bannon, but he has taken legal action regarding documents that the committee sought from the National Archives, presidential records. So the committee sought these documents, President Biden's office and President Biden's decided they were not going to invoke executive privilege and that the National Archivist could turn over the documents to the committee because they said, in effect, this was an event of great significance and investigating it is in the national interest. So the White House said, we're not standing in the way.

The National Archives can turn over the documents. This is the point at which Trump comes in and sues and says, no, you cannot. Those documents are mine. I have privilege. And this is a case that has just been filed in federal court in Washington. So that has to now work its way through the system. I'm kind of surprised that the former president let the National Archives have his documents in the first place. Is that something that's just sort of wrote in these executive administrations? Yes, that is what happens. Documents don't exist the way they, you know, like in Watergate, there were stories of,

you know, people sort of hustling out of the Department of Justice with documents before Nixon could get his hands on them. In just a few seconds, we have left now, and there's almost just time for yes or no. Are you sorry you didn't burn the tapes? The answer is I probably should have. But it doesn't work that way now. Everything is digitized. It's part of a system.

The National Archives has access to them. So you can't immediately just make them disappear or run off with them. So they have the documents. Normally, the documents, you know, wouldn't be turned over immediately. Now, maybe if people are listening and they're thinking like, oh, yeah, Biden, of course, Biden wants the committee to have those documents because obviously what is at issue is the legitimacy of his own President Biden's election. But it's not a no-brainer because if he says, yes, privilege does not attach to these documents, he puts something that President Obama did a lot when he was in the White House. Mr. Obama has asserted executive privilege in an effort to maintain the secrecy of potentially embarrassing Justice Department documents. Those documents are related to the agency's handling of the so-called fast and furious gun trafficking probe. So it is actually surprising that Biden said,

OK, you can have those documents if you look at it through that historical lens. What we're going to find out now is if the Trump team, the Trump legal team, is going to seek an injunction. Because as it stands now, the National Archives are allowed to turn over those documents to the committee unless there is a judicial intervention. Am I the only person in the room who thinks that it's sort of bananas that the former president is claiming executive privilege over documents that may help us understand his role in staging an insurrection on his own government? I think that that is the absurdity of the current moment, is we're trying to have a normal legal conversation about executive privilege in the context where the former occupant of the White House went extremely far to not allow the current occupant of the White House to be sworn in.

And that is really an unprecedented situation in American history, which is why to have this sort of normal discussion about executive privilege is, I think, feels so weird. And now, that said, I do want to dwell on the fact that this select committee has in some ways gotten further than many, many committees who were seeking information while Trump was president. And there is a different environment in Washington now. And there are people who don't want to be associated with the insurrection, who do want to clean up their reputations, who just believe in cooperating. And so this committee has spoken to witnesses. This committee has gotten documents. We don't know the fruits of that labor, but it is a distinctly different situation from some of Congress's attempts at oversight while Trump was president, where there was also a blanket refusal to

cooperate and where the committees ultimately sort of were stymied by court action. That being said, though, I mean, this committee was meant to be a commission. It was meant to be a bipartisan commission that that had legitimacy on both sides of the aisles. And the former president was successful in pressuring Republicans to oppose such a commission, right? So this committee doesn't have bipartisan legitimacy. Has the former president already succeeded in sort of discrediting the work that's going on here in Congress and in the eyes of the American people. Well, I mean, there were 35 Republican members of Congress who voted along with Democrats to create

a nonpartisan commission. So, I mean, when you think about that, that's remarkable. I don't know what other situation in which you've seen 35 Republicans cross the aisle. So there's obviously a desire by some in Washington. Now, they suffered repercussions. When that was killed in the Senate, what happened was Nancy Pelosi said, OK, we'll form a select committee. And they appointed seven Democrats and five Republicans and only two Republicans, Representative Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, said they would participate. So we now have this select committee, which, you know, I think from the start doesn't have the sort of, you know, kind of nonpartisan credibility that a nonpartisan commission would have, like the 9-11 commission. However, that said, it has subpoena power, it's moving aggressively, it's speaking to witnesses, and it's gathering documents. So there is an investigation occurring. And I think that is

important to realize in light of the brouhaha around Steve Bannon is that so far Bannon is the exception. So far, other witnesses are participating. And so far, there does seem to be some promise that the select committee will offer a greater understanding of what happened in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th. But will he be able to outmaneuver this investigation as he has many investigations before it? I mean, for a dude who's been impeached twice, he sure seems to get away with a lot. Can you wait this out until the midterms or maybe even until he, who knows, runs again in 2024? Well, you know, in every case that I've ever covered, which is almost all of them, involving Donald Trump, the party investigating Donald Trump says it is Donald Trump's strategy

to run out the clock. And in some cases he has succeeded, but not in all of them. It's worth pointing out that after a protracted battle to try to keep his tax returns away from the Manhattan District Attorney, Trump lost. His company has been charged with fraud. His chief financial officer has been charged with fraud. There is a trial date set for the August or September of 2022 in that case. There are other civil actions. The former president himself had to this week participate in testimony in a civil trial brought by activists protesting outside of Trump Tower who said Trump was responsible when a security guard punched one of them in the head. And that case is going to go to trial. So while these things have been delayed, he has not in all cases succeeded in derailing

justice entirely. And I think in this committee, too, it's not like everybody's saying we're not going to participate. So it does seem like we may get some answers. Will we end up with some questions? The president may succeed in running out the clock so that all of the committee's questions are not answered and there are some things that are forever shrouded in mystery.

So there's a chance we get some answers, and then there's a chance we don't. Oh, I think we'll get some answers. But will all the questions be answered? Well, I mean, I think, you know, that depends on politics at the end of the day. The select committee is appointed by the House majority. If the House majority flips in 2022, then its work would presumably end. However, there's a lot of time between now and December of 2022 for the current select committee to get some answers. Andrea Bernstein. She used to host a show called Trump Inc. out of WNYC. Now she's working on a new show all about January 6th at Pineapple Street Studios. Keep an eye out for Insurrection, the story of an almost coup

in January 2022. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. Our episode today was produced by Hadi Mawagdi. It's Today Explained. Thank you.