Steve Bannon May Go To Jail After All. We Can Hope.

Comment For years, Steve Bannon has been poking holes in America’s democratic institutions – demonizing the press, spreading lies and hatred about immigrants, fueling an insurgency, defying the law. So far, he’s always gotten away with it. Indicted on charges of defrauding donors to a private group that claimed to be raising money for Donald Trump’s border wall, he received a presidential pardon. Accused of registering to vote in Florida, where he did not live, he managed to avoid prosecution. And along the way, he has been portrayed as a “conservative gunfighter” or a “populist guru” by the media he claimed to despise. Working tirelessly as the president’s aide to destroy and deceive, he was even portrayed on the cover of Time magazine as “The Grand Manipulator,” resembling Trump’s own Rasputin. But now? The tide may have turned. U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of Washington, a Trump appointee, appears ready, willing and able to come down hard on Bannon’s violation of a congressional subpoena last year. After the former Trump adviser offered, at the last possible moment, to testify in his own specific terms before the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riot, Nichols summed it up as a “last-ditch effort to avoid accountability.” And he crushed the arguments of Bannon’s lawyers one after the other. When Bannon’s lawyer, David Schoen, complained in the courtroom, “What’s the point of going to trial here if there’s no defense?” Nichols ominously suggested that Bannon’s team might want to consider it as he goes to trial next week. How journalists can spot the signs of authoritarianism — and help prevent it The Grand Manipulator could even serve some jail time if convicted – up to two years or, perhaps more likely, as little as 30 days. Criminal contempt of Congress, after all, is just a misdemeanor. My animosity for Bannon stems in part from the way he helped turn the public against the reality-based press and the way he tried to bury the truth under an avalanche of lies and deception. In Bannon’s world, the surest way to succeed is to distract, deceive, and inundate the masses with an endless supply of BS. And Trump, clearly, took his advice. “The real opposition is the media. Flood the zone with s—” is his belief, as expressed to writer Michael Lewis. Then you can get away with almost anything. Or in the New York Times: “The media should be ashamed and humiliated and shut up and listen for a while,” Bannon said shortly after the 2016 presidential election. “The media is the opposition party. ». Richard Tofel, then president of ProPublica, quickly tweeted the appropriate response: “We are not the Opposition. We are just trying to report the truth. And we will not be silent.” Making that point, ProPublica later reported early and often on Bannon’s ties to dark money and all the suspicious activities that resulted in federal prosecutors charging him with donor fraud. But Bannon did much more. Early in his tenure with the administration, he reportedly masterminded Trump’s dark catchphrase, “American carnage,” as well as the new president’s executive branch orders to ban visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspend refugee programs. Much more recently – just before the 2020 presidential election – he disparaged the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power. In a recording obtained by Mother Jones and released this week, Bannon sounded celebratory about Trump’s plan to claim win, win or lose. If Trump’s plan to be reinstated as president prevails, Bannon predicted, “Trump never has to go to a voter again. He will shoot [Christopher] Ray, the FBI director… He’s going to go, ‘F— you. How about that?’ Because… he’s had his last election. Oh, he’s going to go off the chain — he’s going to be crazy.” Then, days before January 6, 2021, Bannon used his podcast to invite misguided and criminal mobs to storm the US Capitol with a drumbeat election lie: “It all comes down to, we’re going to confirm Donald’s massive landslide J. Trump? Or will we surrender our constitutional democracy… to the forces of darkness?” Whether as Trump’s chief strategist, president of the far-right Breitbart News, or a guy with an argumentative podcast, Bannon has long been devoted to all the worst causes. So, yes, law-abiding, democracy-defending Americans should be hoping for a prison sentence when Bannon goes on trial on Monday. No doubt he would try to label such a result as a badge of honor. he returned to his podcast immediately after the Nichols decision, shouting “medieval march” to his political enemies: “We’re going to savage these people.” But regardless of his provocative words, a conviction and prison sentence will always be an appropriately ugly part of Bannon’s uglier legacy. For all the evils of the Trump era—and, let’s face it, they are legion—Stephen K. Bannon is surely one of the worst.