Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President and campaign manager to President Trump, has been subpoenaed by the so-called “House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack” otherwise and hereafter referred to as Nancy Pelosi’s partisan witch-hunt. Appropriately and as you’ll see below LEGALLY, Bannon has ignored them, enraging Democrats in Congress who are now considering criminal contempt of Congress charges against the former Breitbart chairman. Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) announced on Oct. 14th that the Democrat-Socialists in power intent to “move forward” and seek Bannon’s prosecution.
“The Select Committee will not tolerate the defiance of our subpoenas,” Thompson said in a statement.
In full Thompson wrote, “Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke. We reject his position entirely. The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt. I’ve notified the Select Committee that we will convene for a business meeting Tuesday evening to vote on adopting a contempt report.”
Thompson went on to threaten,
“The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed. All witnesses are required to provide the information they possess so the Committee can get to the facts.”
Heck, he even threw the legal citation that Bannon could be facing “a fine and between one and twelve months imprisonment.” under 2 U.S.C. §§ 192, 194. Contempt of Congress.
Trump Exerts Executive Privilege, Bannon Complies With Trump’s Attorneys
There’s just one problem: Bannon has the law on his side. Under the 1997 decision in In re Sealed Case (known to posterity as the Espy ruling); SCOTUSBlog writes,
“Espy also clarified that “communications made by presidential advisers in the course of preparing advice for the President come under the presidential communications privilege, even when these communications are not made directly to the President.” To that end, “[t]he privilege must also extend to communications authored or received in response to a solicitation by members of a presidential adviser’s staff, since in many instances advisers must rely on their staff to investigate an issue and formulate the advice to be given to the President.”
But Espy also stressed that “the presidential communications privilege should be construed as narrowly as is consistent with ensuring that the confidentiality of the President’s decisionmaking process is adequately protected.” Thus, “the privilege should not extend to staff outside the White House in executive branch agencies.” Instead, “the privilege should apply only to communications authored or solicited and received by those members of an immediate White House adviser’s staff who have broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given the President on the particular matter to which the communications relate,” and only when the communications are specifically related to advice to the President “on official government matters.”
As the court concluded, “[t]he presidential communications privilege should never serve as a means of shielding information regarding governmental operations that do not call ultimately for direct decisionmaking by the President.”
In September, President Trump asserted his executive privilege in a statement,
“We will fight the Subpoenas on Executive Privilege and other grounds, for the good of our Country, while we wait to find out whether or not Subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America,”
President Trump’s lawyers have informed Bannon and Congress that he is under no obligation to respond to them due to President Trump’s assertion of privilege.
The New York Post wrote, “In the Wednesday letter to Thompson, Bannon’s lawyer said he’d been told that Trump “is exercising his executive privilege” and that Bannon was instructed by the ex-president’s lawyer “not to produce documents or testify until the issue of executive privilege is resolved.”
“That is is an issue between the Committee and President Trump’s counsel and Mr. Bannon is not required to respond at this time,” lawyer Robert Costello wrote in the letter, posted on Twitter by an ABC News producer.”
Steve Bannon team has fired off another letter to Jan 6 committee repeating that they will not cooperate citing Trump executive privilege claims. Letter obtained by @ABC below —-> pic.twitter.com/BU0F9MuFv0
— John Santucci (@Santucci) October 13, 2021
Under those terms, Bannon’s attorney replied to Congress in a letter asserting that under executive privilege Bannon has been advised by President Trump’s attorneys not to respond to the Subpoena. Now both sides are gearing up for a fight.
