Steve Bannon finds himself in a precarious situation.
Bannon reportedly has refused to testify under legal imposition from the House Intelligence Committee during Tuesday’s closed door hearing.
Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said during a news conference after the marathon hearing, that Bannon’s lawyer had told the committee that the former White House aide “was willing to answer our questions but under instructions from the White House not to”. Schiff condemned what he called “a gag order from the White House”.
Bannon claimed he was willing to testify, but then used ‘executive priviledge’ and refused to answer anytime he was pressed about the transition period or when he was interrogated about his tenure as a close adviser of President Donald Trump before being ousted in the middle of August last year.
Despite his refusal to answer the House Intelligence Committee’s questions, Bannon is far from being out of the woods.
The hearing was left in recess and the subpoena remains in effect, which means that Bannon could be called back to testify under oath.
One of the more disturbing factors about this ‘White House gag order’ is that it appears to be the first time it’s ever been done during a criminal investigation.
According to Schiff:
“This was the first time we saw a witness refuse to answer the questions under the instructions of the White House or claim that the White House might later invoke privilege.”
Devin Nunes, the waterboy for Team Trump, appeared to momentarily demur from his anti-FBI hardline by agreeing to the Bannon subpoena when being hounded by reporters, saying:
“Of course I authorized the subpoena,” said the California Republican. “That’s how the rules work.”
When discussing the gag order, Bannon said he was invoking ‘executive privilege’ in his refusal to answer questions — which may be signaled to many as the presidential equivalent of pleading the 5th Amendment.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in a bizarre retelling of the events during her daily briefing, refuted herself by saying:
The subpoena issued by the committee on Tuesday was the result of Bannon apparently invoking the doctrine of executive privilege, which is the implicit power of the executive branch to withhold information about internal deliberations.
Earlier on Tuesday, press secretary Sarah Sanders said “no one” had encouraged Bannon not to be transparent during questioning but there’s a “process of what that looks like”.
Either ‘no one’ said anything, or the ‘process of what that’ no one looks like was instigated by ‘someone’. She quickly tried to blame Congress instead, implying that they lacked the necessary ‘consultation with the White House.’
“As with all congressional inquiries touching upon the White House,” she told reporters, “Congress must consult with the White House prior to obtaining confidential material. This is part of a judicially recognized process that goes back decades.”
However, the supreme court has made clear that giving the president “an absolute privilege” against a subpoena “on no more than a generalized claim of the public interest in confidentiality of nonmilitary and nondiplomatic discussions would upset the constitutional balance of ‘a workable government’”.
Even the Republicans in the House Intel Committee see through this dog and pony show.
The Republican Mike Conaway of Texas insisted to reporters that “this witness is not an executive” and felt confident that Bannon would eventually testify in full. “There were questions that we asked that were not answered and we are going to resolve the issues to get the answers.’’
And just yesterday, Bannon was hit with a double-whammy: an admonition from the House Intelligence Committee, as well as another subpoena from Bob Mueller.
Bob Mueller will not play the ‘executive privilege’ game with a man who has no executive privilege.
We can be confident that Bannon will be forced to give answers, or face the same fate as Mike Flynn, et al. As Rachel Maddow recently reported just a couple of days ago: Team Mueller recently received 200,000 more documents from the White House related to #KremlinGate. Who knows what secrets those pages contain?
Bannon must be soaked in sweat.