It took a jury three hours to convict Steve Bannon, and that includes time taken for lunch. That shouldn’t be surprising. The prosecutors offered two witnesses. Bannon didn’t put on a defense. There wasn’t a lot of evidence to review, nor complicated law. So one would think that Bannon would take a few days to let the guilty verdict pass. But that’s not the modern Repfascist way. No, if Democrats dare do something inconvenient to Republicans, the only acceptable response is to fight back harder and let Democrats know that it’s best to shut up and go to the corner, or the Democrats will get it three times worse.
Investigate the investigators. Bannon promised it was coming. Last night on Tucker Carlson’s show, the man with no defense promised a lot of offense. From the Insider:
Steve Bannon lashed out at the House January 6 committee hours after being found guilty of contempt of Congress on Friday. Speaking to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Bannon warned committee staffers that Republicans would have their own committee if they returned to power.
“We have to have a real January 6 committee, including to get to the staffers now and see about the lies and misrepresentations they put on the national television to defame people,” Bannon said.
“I would tell the Jan. 6 staff right now: preserve your documents because there’s going to be a real committee, and this is going to be backed by Republican grassroots voters to say we want to get to the bottom of this for the good of the nation.”
My colleague, Jason Easley, has written that the GOP is getting out in front of their skis a bit, simply assuming they’ll take the House and Senate this fall. Biden may not be polling well, but the Democrats and Independents are furious – which is what happens when an extreme and stolen SCOTUS starts taking away civil rights. Dems, Independents, and even centrist Republican women are determined to get some of those rights back and ready to fight to keep from losing more.
But even though Bannon is a caricature of himself, he has been disturbingly correct in many past predictions. And if there is one certainty to Republican governance, it is that Democrats do not get away with any investigating and making Republicans uncomfortable. Republicans do investigations and scream. Democrats try to improve the country. That’s Repfascism 101. Capice?
If the Republicans do win the House, one can bet their own house that the GOP will impeach Joe Biden, guaranteed. Lessons must be learned. You don’t impeach a Republican president and get away with it, no matter how deserving. Similarly, the moment the Republicans are sworn in on Monday, January 2nd (IF it happens), Speaker Jim Jordan (Or McCarthy), will form a Committee to investigate the House Select Committee, and though nothing of any substance will come of it, they will force witnesses and investigators to hire lawyers and put on a show, in prime time, assign a special prosecutor who will find some Committee aide that issued a subpoena wrongly, or used some hyperbole, and it will result in a criminal charge, which means the entire investigation was fake. This is how it’s done. Everyone knows that.
It will do Bannon fck all good. He is on his own.
But Bannon is correct in saying that they will unleash hell on the Committee. And Bannon is a long way from serving time in jail. The judge made some harsh rulings against Bannon that open the door for some appeals in the unpredictable, hyper-politicized DC Circuit Court of Appeals and perhaps to the SCOTUS.
Take cover as Bannon unleashes some guilty verdict anger:
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact for speaking engagements or any concerns.