In the end, Steve Bannon could end up in jail. That’s right, deputy Bannoninho’s ideological taskmaster, the minion who doesn’t know the difference between grilling and frying (hamburgers), ran into an obstacle he usually ignores – the law.
The trial of Bannon in Washington began on Monday (18). There are two charges, in federal court, of contempt of Congress. He refused to hand over documents and testify to the commission investigating the January 6 Capitol invasion.
He turned back, haunted by the orange jumpsuit, but it was too late. The judge has ruled that it no longer matters if he testifies and tells what he knows about the break-in – of which he is a proven instigator. Each of the two charges carries a mandatory sentence of 30 days or up to one year in prison, plus a fine of $100,000.
Bannon was already an indicted criminal when he received a presidential pardon hours before Donald Trump left the White House. He risked up to 20 years in jail for stealing about $1 million from a “foundation” that was raising donations to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Bannon’s two accomplices have not been pardoned and will hear their sentences in September.
In audio leaked last week, we overheard Bannon telling minions three days before the 2020 presidential election that Trump would declare himself victorious hours after the poll closed, even if he was losing. Amid laughter, he says everyone is going to freak out — Democrats, cuts, media, and “Trump will be posting shit on Twitter.” The audio foreshadows what the Republican did, overturning the defense that he truly believed the election had been stolen.
Nobody believes that Bannon believes Trump won in 2020. He’s a crook, but he’s not dumb. After being fired after just seven months as a White House adviser in 2017, Bannon angered the then-president for statements he gave to a journalist and spent a period in exile from the Trumpist environment.
But with the indictment and the 2020 presidential campaign, he came crawling back, knowing that a pardon would be the only guarantee of freedom.
Bannon no longer needs Trump. Trump is the one who needs Bannon. In the daily podcast he records on the ground floor of a Washington home owned by an Egyptian, Bannon welcomes a parade of pro-Trump extremists and even enlists housewives to enter politics.
Of more than 100 guests who watched the banned YouTube video podcast “War Room,” 24 won primary elections this year. Bannon is active in organizing the mass theft of midterms, the midterm elections, as they are run by states. He enlists poll workers, election administrators and promises to end American democracy while saying “respect the vote”.
The megalomaniac Bannon’s gift is to identify the ignorant and outcasts, people who don’t know how to put two and two together, and sell them the illusion of relevance, as he does when he appoints “leaders” of his movement abroad.
Every time the renegade captain in Brasilia opens his mouth to sell the big electoral lie, as he did in front of disgusted ambassadors, it’s hard not to remember the primer by the pestilent Rasputin of Washington, now in the dock.
Does the captain psychograph messages? Or does the dazzled heir, never accused of sagacity, regularly phone his ideological overseer for slogans?
