Steve Bannon is ready to tell his truth about the days leading up to the assault on Capitol Hill. After refusing for nearly a year, Donald Trump’s former right-hand man announced to the House Special Committee that he is investigating the attack that he wants to testify. A public hearing and broadcast live, this is the request of the former White House strategist, who risks turning into a show written and directed by Trump but which the commission nevertheless considers invaluable in shedding light on the links between extremist groups and the former president.
Bannon’s turnaround was communicated by his lawyer, Robert J. Costello, in an email in which it is claimed that the former strategist “has not changed his position”, he simply had not yet been able to testify due to the “executive privilege” invoked by Trump in his favor immediately after the events of January 6, 2021. Now that the conditions have changed, the message reads, and that is after the former president has decided to revoke the protection, “Mr. Bannon is ready to comply with the summons. of the Commission “. Preferably, it is underlined almost en passant at the end of the message, “in a public hearing”. A few hours after the news that Trump had given the green light to the testimony of his former strategist in a letter in which he urged him to “tell the truth about him, after being mistreated”.
In short, a story that smacks of a trap artfully concocted by the two former companions of raids in the White House. Especially since the trial of Bannon for contempt of Congress is due to begin on July 18 for refusing to cooperate with the investigation into the assault. The Justice Department has already made it clear that testimony is “irrelevant” to the proceedings, but it is possible that there is a slip.
The special commission considers Bannon one crucial figure to understand the links between the extremist groups that have set fire to the Capitol and the Trump administration, the subject of the next public hearing scheduled for July 12.
The former strategist was accused of having brigaded to get the head of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, out of prison, two days before the assault. And it is deemed a fundamental character in the process of radicalization of supporters of the former president through its ‘War room’ podcast, banned from all major social media platforms for violent content. He himself has boasted on more than one occasion that he is the “ideologue” behind Trump’s attempts and him to overturn the outcome of the elections won by Joe Biden. And it was Bannon, according to super witness Cassidy Hutchinson, whom then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was supposed to meet in secret at a Washington hotel the night before the assault.
It is therefore clear that the testimony of the former strategist may represent a turning point in the reconstruction of the darkest days in recent US history. However, the commission will have to find a way to listen to it without giving Bannon, and Trump, a prime time show.
Source: Ansa
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