Hard to believe he still has allies, but Bannon and his shop-worn fascism seems to have slithered back, with lawfare in mind even as Steve-O is not a lawyer.
But Nixonian Executive Privilege will buy more time and even stonewall Mueller’s investigation. Will it work this time, Constitution will out?
More likely we’ll have more than a few Scooter Libbys on the Fire and Fury road back to Berlin.
Fresh from a three-nation tour of protofascist groups in Europe, Bannon’s return is a sign of desperation ramping up.
In the light of the CambAnal and Facebook revelations, it is odd that a key member of the yet to be charged Mercer crowd is coming back, but they never left.
Bringing back one of the probable indictment recipients of #TrumpRussia into the fold only means there are few loyalists left, even as there is probable infighting going on in the WH.
Stephen K. Bannon, who was ousted as White House chief strategist last summer but has remained in touch with some members of President Trump’s circle, is pitching a plan to West Wing aides and congressional allies to cripple the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
- The first step, these people say, would be for Trump to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and in recent days signed off on a search warrant of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
- Bannon is also recommending the White House cease its cooperation with Mueller, reversing the policy of Trump’s legal team to provide information to the special counsel’s team and to allow staff members to sit for interviews.
- And he is telling associates inside and outside the administration that the president should create a new legal battleground to protect himself from the investigation by asserting executive privilege — and arguing that Mueller’s interviews with White House officials over the past year should now be null and void.
For Bannon, this hostility to Mueller represents an evolution. A year ago, he opposed the firing of then-FBI Director James B. Comey and recommended a hands-off approach to the Russia investigation and Justice.
“I have the upmost respect for Bob Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but the developments over the past two weeks make it the right time to shift the center of gravity of this back to Capitol Hill,” Bannon said. “Make the Republican Party own this, force them to have his back.”
“It’s just like everybody wakes up every morning and does whatever is right in front of them,” said one West Wing aide. “Oh, my God, Trump Tower is on fire. Oh, my God, they raided Michael Cohen’s office. Oh, my God, we’re going to bomb Syria."
In 2013, while Mr. Obama was president, Mr. Trump tweeted: “…I would not go into Syria, but if I did, it would be by surprise and not blurted all over the media like fools.”
Mr. Trump’s pronouncements may already have triggered moves by adversaries, military officials said. Syria has moved its fighter jets, sending some to a Russia-operated airbase near the Syrian city of Latakia, according to Syrian experts, in the belief that the U.S. won’t strike Russian-protected targets.
Iranian troops and allied militias, meanwhile, were redeploying around the country, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"The Russian military in Syria has air defence systems theoretically capable of shooting down US Tomahawk missiles but these can be saturated and in the case of the S-400 [another Russian air defense system] in particular, are largely unproven in actual combat use," Justin Bronk, an air combat expert at RUSI, told Business Insider.
But the cruise missile strike of April 2017 did little to actually stop chemical weapons attacks or violence against civilians from Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime. Within 24 hours, warplanes took off from the damaged airfield again.
[...]
Igor Sutyagin of the Royal United Services Institute, an expert on Russian missile defense systems and strategic armaments, previously told Business Insider that US planes can beat Russian air defenses, but not without a fight.
"Yeah they can do it. In theory they can do it because they will be launching stand off weapons," Sutyagin said, referring to long range missiles as "standoff weapons."
"The tactics of these low visibility planes as they were designed originally was to use the fact that detection range was decreased so you create some gaps in radar range and then you approach through gap and launch standoff weapons," he said.
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