Banning wasn’t elected. Why would he be covered by executive privilege?
I never said Bannon was. Perhaps you meant to reply to someone else?
Bannon thinks he is covered by Trumps executive privilege, perhaps because he thinks Trump is still King. Bannon and the rest of the ilk are really deranged.
I haven’t been able to find confirmation, but I seem to recall that Winslow* was one of those who argued that the Jan 6 Committee should have charged Bannon with either civil or inherent contempt, instead of with criminal contempt. Those who’ve argued for civil or inherent have done so on the basis of ‘time spent waiting for courts to act.’
Here’s an excerpt from a write-up (by a constitutional-law prof) on some of the nuances:
*Don Winslow is a novelist (crime thrillers, mainly) who is very active on Twitter, and who posts there some highly-effective short videos on political matters, such as:
Just thinking out loud I suppose. Wasn’t really directed at your comment. My bad.
Something I don’t understand here.
There’s all this fuss about whether Bannon was or wasn’t an elected official, and whether he was or wasn’t actually working for Trump around the time of the insurrection, and what effect that has on Trump’s claim of executive privilege.
I don’t get that.
The whole idea of executive privilege is that the President should be able to get advice and consultation secretly or anonymously, so that those consulting with him can give their uninhibited opinions without fear of repercussions later.
If that’s the purpose of executive privilege, then what does it matter whether the consultant is an elected official or not, or whether he was on payroll at the time, or in what capacity he was giving advice?
IANAL, but AIUI “executive privilege” claims require balancing the need to protect confidentiality against the need to administer justice. Some kinds of confidential communication should be more inviolate than others.
Executive privilege confidentiality is respected in order to let the President do his job via frank communication with his advisers. Not via, for example, consulting fortune-tellers or getting unofficial tips from cronies with no official position. Not even if the President happens to feel that the advice of his fortune-tellers or his cronies is very important in his decision-making.
This part I definitely get, the important criterion being the need to balance confidentiality versus the need to administer justice (or as it’s sometime put, the greater needs of the Nation). But does that criterion have anything to do with who is giving the president that advice?
Thus, the question: Are there established rules as to who can advise the president in confidentiality? We all know that Trump was a one-man swampmaster of cronyism. But what are the rules over executive privilege? I’m not aware of any body of statutory law on the matter, and it’s not mentioned in the Constitution that I know of. It seems just to be an entrenched custom that goes back all the way to George Washington.
The more relevant argument here, as far as I know, is simply that Trump isn’t president (no matter what Trump says), and Joe Biden is, and executive privilege belongs to the president to wield (or not) as he sees fit, not to Citizen Trump.
Me either, and AFAICT it’s a heavily contested subject even among experts. But the notion that EP confidentiality should be restricted to official executive-branch communications, and not include just any loose-lipped schmoozing that the Chief Exec feels like indulging in but then doesn’t want anyone to know about, seems like a pretty commonsensical principle to my naive non-lawyer mind.
Seems eminently sensible to me. It seems odd that in the 140+ years of this republic, nothing has ever been codified into the laws about executive privilege. Thus, the tradition is open to controversy over just who can consult with the president confidentially, as well as just how much privilege a former president can claim to control.
I think that’s always been considered a feature, not a bug. There is a fear about defining it too much, because then it might restrict the President from doing something urgently that he (or she) needs to do while maintaining necessary confidentiality. And from a political perspective, defining it neuters the power of your party’s leader, or will once you elect someone.
Here is a simple but interesting article about executive privilege:
It seems to me that it’s like inflation. Over time it slowly increases and it’s practically inevitable, though you can try to manage it somewhat. Executive privilege seems to get added onto with each successive administration; sometimes in small ways, sometimes in huge ways, as different Presidents push the boundary more and more. But putting a cap on it would be like putting a hard cap on the economy’s inflation, and while either is theoretically possible, doing so can also be disastrous. Just as the Federal Reserve has tools that they use to carefully manage inflation to keep it from going out of hand, so does the Judicial Branch have the means to curb executive privilege from reaching too far, as they did when Nixon tried to exert it during the Watergate scandal to suppress evidence of his criminal activity. That failed and Nixon resigned shortly after.
I guess the main reason why it hasn’t been put into law is because for 140+ years the republic has gotten by just fine that way, and so it doesn’t need to. And as history shows, indefinite isn’t the same as infinite; the indefinite power of executive privilege doesn’t mean it can extend to anything and everything.
I 'm sure that what I’m feeling right now is a perfectly reasonable amount of schadenfreude:
This is nice, too:
Please, oh, please, let them film it, kind of like this.
The Trump ally tells reporters before turning himself in to authorities: ‘We’re taking down the Biden regime.’
He sounds like the former Iraqi propaganda guy - Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (AKA Baghdad Bob)
If anything, Bob had more credibility.
May this portend many perp walks to come.
Preach it!
I expect that he’ll say that his lawyer told him that he could ignore the summons and he - a non-lawyer - should not be sent to jail for listening to his lawyer’s advice.
And, of course, he will also make the argument that his lawyer’s advice was correct.
Usually, the DOJ would agree to a compromise like that Bannon will be allowed off the hook if he testifies and produces all documents. As it is, he may well fight it up to the Supreme Court, which means that in roughly a year, the Supreme Court tells him that he must testify and produce all documents or go to jail.
At that point, he’ll produce evidence and go Fifth Amendment for most other things.
Through all of this, his lawyers bills are being paid for by others and the dude is laughing about his ability to troll everyone for a year.
"Then, Mr. Bannon, I suggest you contemplate hiring a better lawyer while you’re sitting in your jail cell.
“Next case.”
I can only imagine how long that defense would last if the lawyer in question gets hauled in for giving bum advice. “No, your honor, I never told my… ex-client such a thing. He is lying.”