The dominoes continue to fall.
In a sentencing memorandum filed yesterday, federal prosecutors argued that former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon should be jailed for six months and fined US$200,000 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
For all the tumult of his relationship with the former president (a man seemingly constitutionally incapable of keeping friends), Bannon was one of the few guys to work his way back into Trump’s good graces after their initial falling out, starting a podcast defending the president (with another former Trump staffer Jason Miller) when Trump had only one set of impeachment proceedings against him (historians will call it his golden age).
For his part, on his last day in office Trump pardoned Bannon from federal fraud charges relating to Bannon’s “We Build the Wall” fundraiser.
The trial has been predictably farcical. Having promised to unleash “hell” on the process, Bannon treated it the same way he did the committee. He just didn’t show. Meanwhile his lawyers didn’t present a single witness or piece of evidence, and merely asked the jury to consider whether Bannon had deliberately ignored the subpoena (this coming in the face of several social media posts from Bannon giving a strong indication that he did).
Bannon is one of at least 18 members of Trump’s staff to be charged with various offences — not all of them, it must be said, directly related to Trump.
