The kept mainstream media rejoiced at the news that the Department of Justice, treating the January 6 “star chamber” investigations as legitimate, issued a memo on Monday demanding that former Trump advisor Steve Bannon be given the maximum sentence for refusing to submit to that committee’s demands.
“Star chamber” is a term used for any court proceeding that is grossly unfair or that is used to persecute an individual.
From the very beginning, the House’s “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” violated House rules — and everything the committee says, seeks, or demands, from that moment on, is illegitimate.
The major news outlets, including The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, and even the left-wing U.K. Independent, jumped all over the memorandum, quoting various pieces from it as they continued their efforts to sully the reputation and credibility of the man who ran Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016, and then served as his chief strategist and senior counselor in the early months of his administration.
Efforts to obtain a copy of the 24-page memorandum from the Justice Department failed, but the mainstream media was happy to quote at length all the reasons they could conjure to support the DOJ’s demand that Bannon suffer the maximum penalty for his two convictions for misdemeanors: failing to show up at the committee’s command, and failure to provide it with documentation that it demanded.
Each misdemeanor would be punishable by between 30 days and one year in jail, plus fines. The DOJ wants Bannon behind bars for six months, and for him to pay a $200,000 fine.
From the elusive partisan memo, as reported by The Washington Post:
“The rioters who overran the Capitol on January 6 did not just attack a building — they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country was built and through which it endures. By flouting the Select Committee’s subpoena and its authority, the Defendant exacerbated that assault,” U.S. prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Amanda R. Vaughn wrote in a 24-page sentencing request. “Such behavior cannot be tolerated, lest it become commonplace and accepted, and the important work of congressional committees like the Select Committee rendered impossible.”
“Cannot be tolerated” is the theme reiterated by other members of the press. Here is ABC News:
“From the moment that the Defendant, Stephen K. Bannon, accepted service of a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, he has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt,” prosecutors said Monday. “The Committee sought documents and testimony from the Defendant relevant to a matter of national importance: the circumstances that led to a violent attack on the Capitol and disruption of the peaceful transfer of power. In response, the Defendant flouted the Committee’s authority and ignored the subpoena’s demands.”
The statement continued, “For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment — the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines’ range — and fined $200,000 — based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation.”
ABC News added:
“From the time he was initially subpoenaed, the Defendant has shown that his true reasons for total noncompliance have nothing to do with his purported respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, or executive privilege, and everything to do with his personal disdain for the members of Congress sitting on the Committee and their effort to investigate the attack on our country’s peaceful transfer of power,” they say. “[Bannon’s] abject refusal to heed the Committee’s subpoena, under the circumstances with which this country is confronted, could not be more serious.”
From the U.K. Independent one learns that the elusive memo included this:
“Through his public platforms, the Defendant has used hyperbolic and sometimes violent rhetoric to disparage the Committee’s investigation, personally attack the Committee’s members, and ridicule the criminal justice system,” prosecutors wrote, adding that Mr. Bannon’s numerous public utterances show his actions were “aimed at undermining the Committee’s efforts to investigate an historic attack on government.”
“Rather than respect the criminal justice process and participate meaningfully and seriously in the courtroom defense of his case, for the Defendant, ‘going on offense’ meant resorting to name calling, mimicry, and menacing rhetoric aimed at the Committee’s investigation and its membership,” they said.
The outlet added:
“The Defendant’s abject refusal to heed the Committee’s subpoena, under the circumstances with which this country is confronted, could not be more serious,” they said….
“The Defendant is entitled to his views and to express them vociferously; there is nothing criminal about the Defendant’s opinions or his expression of those opinions. But this Court may — and should — consider the Defendant’s out-of-court statements to ascertain his motive, evaluate his intent, and measure the degree of his contempt, including appraising his overall disdain and disrespect for the rule of law and the investigative and criminal justice processes that are crucial to maintaining a peaceful, lawful, and orderly society,” they said.
Bannon has, from the very beginning, had nothing but contempt for the January 6 “star chamber” investigation. It has had nothing to do with any crime that Bannon committed. It had everything to do with his defiance, and his close relationship to the hated 45th president of the United States — one who was legitimately elected, by the way — who has exposed the Deep State’s control over the media, among other heinous political crimes.
Bannon is not going away quietly. As he was leaving the courtroom in July after being found guilty, he said:
I only have one disappointment, and that is the gutless members of that show-trial committee, that [Jan. 6] committee, didn’t have the guts to come down here and testify.
We may have lost a battle here today, but we’re not going to lose this war…. [The jury] came to their conclusion about what was put on … in that courtroom…. But listen, in the closing argument, the prosecutor missed one very important phrase, right? I stand with Trump and the Constitution, and I will never back off that, ever.
Bannon’s attorney David Schoen said then that Bannon’s defense team will appeal the case, saying, “This is just Round One.”
When history is accurately written, the January 6 committee will be relegated to a mere footnote in history, while Bannon will be celebrated as a hero standing up to unconstitutional weaponization of an illegal committee acting in concert with a corrupt and sold-out Department of Justice.
