Steve Bannon may have just made prosecutors’ lives a lot easier
When Steve Bannon was indicted, we warned everyone that he was unlikely to be held in jail all the way until his trial date. Absent any aggravating factors, these kinds of nonviolent contempt charges generally mean you’re allowed out on bail or house arrest, which Bannon predictably was.
This has led to a lot of consternation about how Bannon is going to use his time out on bail to somehow magically… win? It’s never clear how the doomsday types expect the bad guys to pull off whatever evil stuff they’re predicting. But back in the real world, when habitual criminals are allowed out on bail, they usually just end up making things worse for themselves.
If Bannon were smart, he’d be keeping as low of a public profile as possible, so he can remain out on bail all the way until his trial next year. Instead, Bannon and Matt Gaetz just released a podcast episode where they call for “shock troops” to take over the government in 2024. They seem to be trying to be careful to frame this armed insurrection in terms of Donald Trump somehow winning the 2024 election. But the implication seems to be that if Trump runs in 2024 and loses but claims he won, they want thousands of armed vigilantes to try to overthrow the legitimate United States government.
This kind of empty rhetoric, this many years out from an imaginary scenario that’s not going to happen anyway, is not something to fear. There’s no reason to hide under your desk. If anything, Bannon and Gaetz are talking like this because they want to terrorize you, and make you believe that they’re somehow magically going to take over the country. These guys both expect to rot in prison, and so at this point taunting is the only thing they have left.
Here’s the thing, though. Even if Bannon’s tricky wording about shock troops doesn’t rise to the level of an actual criminal incitement to violence, it doesn’t have to. The judge in Steve Bannon’s case can revoke bail at any time, for any reason. So if Bannon keeps talking like this, he may end up spending the next six months in jail or under house arrest until his trial.
This would give prosecutors plenty of leverage for trying to pressure Bannon into cutting a cooperating plea deal. Bannon may arrogantly (and wrongly) believe that he’ll be acquitted at trial. But if he blows his bail and has to spend the next half a year incarcerated while awaiting trial, that’s a whole different ballgame.
Matt Gaetz isn’t helping himself with this kind of rhetoric either. Federal prosecutors generally like to wait until they’ve built a complete criminal case against someone before indicting them. But if Gaetz keeps talking about troops overtaking the government, it could prompt prosecutors to indict him now on what they have, and bring any additional indictments later.
So rather than cower to the likes of Steve Bannon and Matt Gaetz, we should probably be encouraging them to keep running their mouths like this. They can only end up harming themselves with this kind of talk. These are two cornered individuals, one of whom is on track to be indicted, and the other of whom already has a criminal trial date, trying to convince us that they’ve somehow got us where they want us. It’s up to us to not fall for this kind of bravado, and instead laugh at these idiots for doing themselves in.
