Steve Bannon’s Jan. 6 legal strategy: ‘Blowing up the whole system’
Steve Bannon—the right-wing media personality turned adviser to Donald Trump turned right-wing media personality again—became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress last month after he refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now, Bannon appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him.
Bannon is attempting to force investigators to potentially expose who they’ve talked to and what they’ve said, peek into secret communications on the committee, and create a playbook for other resistant witnesses, according to several legal experts.
“There’s no cost to opposing Congress if you can give Congress a black eye for even daring to ask you questions,” said Kel McClanahan, an attorney who specializes in national security matters.
As Bannon faces criminal charges, he’s entitled to the evidence against him. And in a typical galaxy-brain, Bannon countergambit, Trump’s former senior adviser is trying to make some of that evidence public.
According to a Sunday night court filing by federal prosecutors, that includes secret witness interviews by law enforcement and internal communications between House committee staff members. The Justice Department claims that, if this material were exposed to the public, it would cause “specific harms” like “witness tampering,” with the added effect of making it difficult to find impartial jurors at a future trial.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Bannon’s lawyers said the government’s argument was “festooned with hyperbole… perhaps designed to score points with the media.” That same day, a “press coalition” of 15 news organizations—including Buzzfeed, CNN, and The Washington Post—sided with Bannon and asked the judge overseeing the case to make documents available and reject what it called “this broad gag order.”
But while most press coverage of this fight has hinged on the accusation that Bannon is trying to turn this into a media circus or spectacle, some legal scholars say the real intention is to harm the investigation itself. One called it “graymail,” a legal defense tactic that’s tantamount to blackmail and has since been outlawed.
“It’s not about trying the case in the media. It’s about making it costly for the committee to go after him,” McClanahan told The Daily Beast. “It is graymail, pure and simple: You can’t touch me, because if you do then I’ll spill your secrets.” [Continue reading…]