Government

Steve Bannon Invokes Deez Nuts Defense To Congressional Subpoena

Old 'Three Shirts' is really going for broke on this one.

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(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Steve Bannon’s going for broke. The putrefying podcaster is asserting “executive and attorney client privileges” as a basis for refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony in the congressional investigation of the events surrounding the Capitol Riot.

Let me save you the trouble of Googling it: Steve Bannon is not a lawyer, and he got yeeted out of the White House in 2017.

He did get a presidential pardon for defrauding investors in a homebrew border wall project, however, which may or may not account for his willingness to make such a patently ridiculous argument, all but daring congress to hold him in contempt.

Maggie Haberman got the BOFA letter to the Select Committee from Bannon’s lawyer Robert Costello, of Garth Brooks pardon dangle fame. Luckily Costello represents Rudy Giuliani as well, so he’s built up a tolerance for clients with alarming bodily discharge. God bless Scotchgard!

“On the afternoon of October 6, 2021, I received a letter from Justin Clark, as counsel for then President of the United States Donald J. Trump,” he begins. Because haha, who is president today, did I trigger ya, lib?

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Apparently, Clark’s letter made reference to “information which is potentially protected from disclosure by executive and other privileges, including among others, the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.” None of these is remotely applicable to conversations between a cockroach who thinks he’s Gregor Samsa and an OAN-addled maniac huddled up scarfing Big Macs in the Oval Office.

Clark then went on to instruct Bannon to “where appropriate, invoke any immunities and privilege he may have” in defiance of subpoenas for documents and testimony.

“It is therefore clear to us that since the executive privileges belong to President Trump, and he has, through his counsel, announced his intention to assert those executive privileges enumerated above, we must accept his direction and honor his invocation of privilege,” Costello continues, conveniently eliding the fact that no such privilege has yet been asserted beyond a general admonition to invoke it “where appropriate.”

“We will comply with the directions of the courts, when and if they rule on these claims of both executive and attorney client privileges,” he concluded. “Since those privileges belong to President Trump and not to Mr. Bannon, until these issues are resolved, Mr. Bannon is legally unable to comply with your subpoena requests for documents and testimony.”

For anyone paying attention during the Trump years, it’s a familiar refrain. Make a facially nonsensical reference to sweeping privileges which you claim belong to the executive, never actually invoke those privileges with respect to any specific piece information which might be challenged, skate away confident that no one has the balls to fight about it.

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“I’m not claiming executive privilege because that’s the president’s power and I have no power there,” then Attorney General Jeff Sessions simpered in June of 2017,  refusing to answer congressional queries about his conversation with the president.

And they got away with it for four years, even managing to run out the clock on Don McGahn’s testimony by dragging it out through the courts. Of course, that strategy depends on having Uncle Bill running cover at the DOJ, depositing all criminal referrals for contempt of congress in the circular file before heading out for a highball at the Trump Hotel.

Will Attorney General Merrick Garland put up with this shit, particularly since he’s made clear that there will be no invocations of executive privilege for IRL government officials as regards their conversations with the former president?

Guess we’re about to find out.

Liz Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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