The surrender yesterday of one-time Donald Trump strategist and all-time Donald Trump flamethrower Steve Bannon— turning himself in to the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury for contempt of Congress— is rich. Not rich with principle, not rich with reward, and certainly not rich with contrition. To the contrary, Bannon’s take-no-prisoners proclamation as he surrendered was, “We're taking down the Biden regime.”
Bannon’s comeuppance is only rich in irony.
The irony is that Bannon claims he’s protected by “executive privilege” from being forced to testify about the January 6th insurrection. But that’s a thin platform for his defense, especially since evidently he was part of the conspiracy in the “war room” at Washington’s Willard Hotel where parts of the insurrection were plotted. Executive privilege allows a president and his top aides to conceal certain kinds of confidential communications from the courts and the Congress. The trouble for Bannon is, at the time of the insurrection, he wasn’t a top aide any more. He had left his executive position at the White House— fired is more like it— almost three-and-a-half years earlier.
Yet now, as if he’s Trump himself, he’s claiming executive privilege.
Although it’s never smart to predict political or prosecutorial outcomes, there is guidance in precedent. During Watergate, in a ruling that forced Richard Nixon’s White House to release the infamous Oval Office tapes, the Supreme Court said that if information is relevant to a criminal case— and the planning, prompting, execution, and cover-up of the attempted Capitol coup in January were criminal acts— executive privilege can be moot.
What’s more, the Watergate-era ruling didn’t just apply to the president’s aides, it applied to the president himself. The Court said unanimously that there is no “absolute, unqualified presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances.”
In other words, executive privilege— especially if the nation’s security is not at stake— does not inherently impart immunity from criminal prosecution. Executive privilege pertains to presidential conversations, not presidential crimes.
Which brings us to Donald Trump. He says that by asserting executive privilege and refusing to capitulate to demands for testimony about the January insurrection, he and his henchmen are protecting the presidency “for the good of our country.”
As opposed to the good of Donald Trump.
His rationale is rich, because no president has done as much as Trump to cripple the country. No president has done as much to undermine the presidency he purports to protect, and the Constitution, and our democracy. By incessantly claiming that last year’s vote was rigged, he still refuses to admit what overwhelming evidence has shown was a free and fair election. And he still takes no responsibility for inciting a mob, two months after the election, intent on insurrection. His message that day to the traitors who tried to corrupt our democracy was, “We love you.”
The “good of our country?” The only priority for Donald Trump has always been Donald Trump. The good of the country is a cynical afterthought.
So with a complicit gang of true believers, he stonewalls. In the ultimate absurdity, given Trump’s narcissistic contempt for truth, his spokesman tweeted last week, "Pres. Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution & the Office of the Presidency, & will be seeing this process through.”
It’s more like a commitment to staying above the law.
Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder wrote an insightful and instructive essay early this year. “Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.”
How sad. How scary.
This isn’t just about Stephen Bannon, although he’s a dominant and defiant public face of pro-Trump resistance. And it’s not just about former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows either, who by following in Bannon’s footsteps and refusing to obey a congressional subpoena, is on course right now to be surrendering soon to the FBI himself.
It is about Donald Trump, and the culture he created. A culture of dishonesty and disobedience, of truculence and turmoil, of treachery and treason.
“We're taking down the Biden regime.” That wasn’t just Stephen Bannon talking. It could have been the ego-driven voice of Donald Trump. They will tell you they mean they’ll take down Biden in the next presidential election. But their every action since the last election puts the lie to that.
The wheels of justice turn slowly. But if they trounce the likes of Bannon and Meadows, they’ll roll that much closer to Trump. And we’ll all be the better for it.
Then, the “good of our country” will truly be served.
For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his writing also appears on a website he co-founded, BoomerCafe.com.
Here, here. Thanks for this truthful article. And, greetings from Peru.