Bannon surrenders to FBI on Monday
The jig is up for Steve Bannon. Despite his defiance of a summons ordering him to testify on what he knew about plans for the protest that ended with Donald Trump supporters storming Congress on Jan. 6, he has been taken into federal custody.
Bannon, on Monday, surrendered to officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigations Washington, D.C. field office. He now faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
“We’re taking down the Biden regime everyday,” he said to sup- porters as he entered the building, according to a BBC News report.
Last week, the Justice Department said in a statement, that Bannon was indicted on one count of refusing to appear for a deposition and one count for refusing to provide documents following a subpoena from a committee investigating the riot.
According to subpoena documents, Bannon, who currently hosts the War Room podcast, said the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
Such a statement would suggest that he had at least some sort of knowledge about what was going to happen. To think otherwise would be foolish. We cannot merely dismiss his “prediction” as silly radio show banter — especially when all hell really did break loose.
However, it’s unclear how much Bannon knew about the plans that would unfold the following day — and that’s exactly what the Justice Department intends to find out. Bannon’s indictment is the first to come out of the House of Representative’s Select Committee’s inquiry of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
It’s no secret that Trump has urged his former aides to reject deposition requests, citing that they are covered by executive privilege. However, that has not yet been determined and won’t be until the end of this month, when the US Court of Appeals holds a hearing to rule on his executive privilege claim.
Until then, it would behoove Trump’s supporters to cooperate with the Justice Department and not ignore deposition requests, lest they end up like Bannon.