The Steve Bannon indictment worked just as intended
It was announced today that Steve Bannon’s federal criminal trial for contempt of Congress will take place in July of 2022. This is roughly the timetable that would have been expected. Yet for some reason, the doomsday types are now insisting that the trial date is a reason to believe that all hope his lost.
For those who have been paying attention, it’s been clear from the beginning that the January 6th Committee made a point of starting off by subpoenaing Steve Bannon, knowing he wouldn’t cooperate due to his existing legal troubles, so it could make an example out of him by having the DOJ indict and arrest him for contempt. The entire point of this was to scare other, more skittish witnesses into cooperating. That strategy has worked masterfully.
January 6th organizer Ali Alexander has come out of hiding to announce that he’s cooperating with the committee, specifically because he says he doesn’t want to go to prison for contempt. And today we all learned that Mike Pence’s former Chief of Staff Marc Short has been secretly cooperating with the committee for weeks, which suggests that other witnesses have also secretly been cooperating.
Since the reason for indicting Bannon was to scare other witnesses into cooperating, it doesn’t matter when Bannon’s trial is. He wasn’t going to cooperate anyway. If anything, the announcement of his trial date is a reminder that Bannon is in fact on a path to prison. Nothing is magically going to save him. Other witnesses can see that, and they’re caving accordingly.
And no, Steve Bannon can’t “run out the clock.” Even if the Republicans do win the House in the midterms, that wouldn’t cause existing DOJ indictments to somehow magically disappear. Bannon, and others charged in relation to January 6th, will still go to prison.
Nor is there any validity whatsoever to the doomsday narrative about Trump’s people remaining loyal because he’s going to become President in 2024 and just pardon them all. First of all, Trump – who is visibly falling apart to the point that his handlers have mostly kept him out of the public eye all year – isn’t within a million miles of being physically or cognitively able to run or win in 2024. And even if he did, his people aren’t going to be willing to rot in prison from now until January 2025 on the faint hope he wins the election and pardons him. That’s laugh out loud nonsense.
Steve Bannon’s life is over. Like all people who are cornered, shattered, and have no way out, he’s entertaining desperate and delusional fantasies about using his criminal trial to somehow magically force the DOJ to give up secrets about other prosecutions. That’s so absurd, you almost can’t say it out loud without busting out laughing. Bannon is finished. The January 6th Committee, with the help of the DOJ, has destroyed him. The committee was never expecting to get his testimony. But busting him, in addition to putting a career criminal in prison, is also working in terms of scaring other witnesses into cooperating – which was the entire point from day one.
