Steve Bannon indicted for contempt, Merrick Garland’s DOJ comes through, Mark Meadows apparently next
For nearly three weeks we’ve been waiting to see what Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice was doing behind the scenes with the criminal contempt referral against Steve Bannon. It was reasonably certain that Bannon would end up indicted, but we nonetheless had to listen to doomsday pundits openly fret about how Garland was supposedly doing “nothing.” Now we have our answer, and it’s the one we expected.
We all learned today that Steve Bannon has been criminally indicted by a grand jury on two counts of felony contempt of Congress. He’s expected to voluntarily surrender on Monday. This has oddly set off a whole new round of fretting about Bannon magically fleeing the country this week. But this is just a procedural move. The Feds surely have eyes on him, and this is a non-issue.
But as fully expected as this Bannon indictment is, it’s nonetheless a huge deal. Bannon will stand federal trial on multiple felony counts, and if convicted, he’ll go to prison. There’s no Trump pardon to save him this time – and no, Trump cannot have secretly pardoned him before leaving office for a crime he hadn’t even committed yet.
Today the January 6th Committee underscored its intention to refer Mark Meadows for contempt. Based on today’s Bannon news, we can now expect Meadows (unless he caves first) to be indicted and arrested within about three weeks of his referral.
In fact all of the January 6th subpoena recipients can now expect to be criminally indicted by the DOJ if they don’t comply. This leaves recently subpoenaed individuals like Stephen Miller and Kayleigh McEnany the option of complying or being put on criminal trial. We expect most of them will cave.
