Steve Bannon just got squeezed
When a career criminal is being dismantled by the legal system, one of the patterns we keep seeing is that the civil cases and criminal cases involved start to compound each other, ultimately making things untenable for that villain. Now we’re seeing that play out with Steve Bannon, with a particularly ugly outcome for him today.
Steve Bannon is awaiting criminal trial in New York on fraud charges, which will send him to prison for several years if he’s convicted. In the meantime Bannon is in a legal battle with his former attorney, who claims that Bannon refused to pay him about half a million dollars.
The attorney is going after Bannon’s bank records and such. In an effort to stop it, Bannon is being forced to admit that his bank records contain evidence that could be used against him in his criminal trial. Bannon is arguing that he can’t be forced to turn over his bank records in the civil proceeding due to his Fifth Amendment protections.
But in so doing, Bannon just announced to prosecutors that they should look more closely at his bank records for the evidence that he’s talking about. And prosecutors will have no problem obtaining any bank records that they don’t already have. It’s the kind of catch-22 where in order to try to get off the hook in one legal situation, you end up having to compromise yourself in another legal situation. Bannon may fend off his attorney’s fees for awhile longer, but in so doing, he just increased the odds of going to prison.
