Despite House Republican enthusiasm for going after Biden aides using the ex-Trump adviser’s contempt charges as precedent, payback won’t be easy.
Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress greeted the indictment of Steve Bannon with a warning: It’s payback time once we take back the House. But getting revenge won’t be so simple.
Bannon turned himself into authorities on Monday after getting charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena from the House’s Jan. 6 select committee. The former Trump campaign chief had cited executive privilege and other protections to avoid testifying, but Bannon was left exposed for defying investigators after President Joe Biden waived those claims.
And that Biden deferral to Congress on Bannon’s testimony inflamed Republicans — within hours of the indictment, Trump’s top GOP allies were strongly signaling that a future GOP-led House would use the threat of criminal prosecution to extract testimony from Biden’s aides. Republicans have indicated they want to hear from the sitting president’s senior advisers about the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, migration on the southern border and the Justice Department’s crackdown on threats against school board members.
“There are a lot of Republicans eager to hear testimony from Ron Klain and Jake Sullivan when we take back the House,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted after the indictment came down, naming Biden’s chief of staff and national security adviser.
Yet Bannon’s case may well have no bearing on the GOP enthusiasm for hauling in the Biden White House. Legal experts say the Bannon indictment stands apart from nearly any other contempt of Congress charge in memory — from the brazenness of his defiance to his weak claim of executive privilege, which is meant to protect presidential talks with top advisers, not a private citizen’s help for a former president trying to overturn the results of an election.
“If Ron Klain ever participates in a violent insurrection against the union, then I hope they would bring him in,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 select committee. “What you have is a friend of a former president who is asserting an executive privilege that doesn’t apply to him. It’s absurd, and I would hope that our GOP colleagues understand that there is no legal basis for what Steve Bannon is saying.”
There’s another key issue that could frustrate Republicans’ big oversight plans for 2023: Biden will still be president. His authority to waive executive privilege — or uphold it, in the case of his own aides — carries significant legal weight until his term is up.
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Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress greeted the indictment of Steve Bannon with a warning: It’s payback time once we take back the House. But getting revenge won’t be so simple.https://t.co/lhAEEaJh1i
— POLITICO (@politico) November 16, 2021
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