Steve Bannon

[Boydog]

Was shown making a speech saying Trump could be elected three times. This SOB is making fun of the democrats and the Jan 6 committee.
Merrick Garland needs to be held accountable for playing into these creep’s hands.

[The Wizard]

1. Every day he walks free the Democrats lose core voters.

[Boydog]

3. We need to demand that Garland move

I think Garland has decided he is not going to be rushed by anyone this go around. He needs at least to explain what the delay is all about. This situation pleads for an explanation as to why Bannon should not be charged with contempt. I feel really sorry for Rep. Thompson and the members of that committee.
This is turning into a disgrace.

[gab13by13]

4. Bannon is doing way worse than that,

every damn day on his pod cast he promotes the Big Lie and encourages the ongoing insurrection.

[Boydog]

7. And Garland does nothing. I hate to say this but I am leaning toward wanting Garland's removal

It is not the time or place for this kind of inaction

[Joinfortmill]

5. Contact the White House. I did.

[Corgigal]

24. I guess they don't believe it.

The ole where are they gonna go? I guess they don’t believe home is a location.
I hope I’m mistaken.

[Beastly Boy]

6. What does Garland need to be accountable for?

How exactly is Garland playing into Bannon's hands, and, if you can cite any specific examples of Garland playing into Bannon's hands, would you share them?

Surely you are not proposing that Bannon making a speech, or Bannon making fun of democrats, or the absence of Garland's public statements about his investigation is a measure of Garland's lack of accountability!

Lastly, what, would make you satisfied that Garland is indeed being accountable?

[Boydog]

8. I think considering what we have been through

the last four years as a nation and the open threats our republic faces he might be a bit more aggressive in his actions against not just Bannon but the whole group of insurrectionists.With the midterms around the corner we move slowly at our own peril. There are far greater sins than acting with dispatch. He is far too passive.

[Beastly Boy]

9. The degree of his agressiveness is entirely at his discretion.

And the way justice is administered doesn't fluctuate from year to year. There are very strict rules Garland has to follow which are in place to make sure the degree of his aggressiveness is kept in check, and he is powerless to change them. Only Congress can do this, so it's up to the Congress to account for the open threats and what we have been through the last four years, by passing new laws. So if you have a grievance about Bannon, or recent history, or the threats we face, it is with the Congress, not Garland. Of course, unless you are OK with Pelosi or Schumer acting like autocrats, they are limited with how aggressive they can be as well.

To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government except all others.

On edit: I am still not clear about how exactly Garland is playing into Bannon's hands, or what exactly Garland should do to satisfy your standards for accountability, or whether you consider Bannon's freedom of speech to be Garland's fault.

[Poiuyt]

10. And yet there are a lot of legal experts who are also wondering why it's taking Garland so long

It's not like it's so complicated fraud case. Bannon was duly served a lawful subpoena and failed to show up.

[Beastly Boy]

12. Actually there are very few legal experts who are wondering about Garland.

Most people who are critical of Garland's pace of progress are not legal experts. And the vast majority of legal experts, as well as all the members of the House who sent contempt referral to DOJ, are wisely staying out of his hair.

Just to get an idea of how complicated this matter is, and how little difference Garland's discretion counts for, here is an article I found helpful:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/litman-don-t-be-too-sure-about-the-doj-s-duty-to-indict-bannon/ar-AAPQAeq

[Silent3]

11. There may be a lot of rules, but there's also a lot of room for discretion

What makes you so certain that it's the rules slowing things down? The rules don't tell the DoJ how quickly they have to act to prosecute a case, or even if they have to act at all.

Bannon's contempt simply isn't that complicated, even if he wants to pretend it is. I'll take Lawrence Tribe's word for it that Bannon should have been charged by now.

[Beastly Boy]

13. As far as Garland is concerned, there is virtually no discretion.

The only discretion he has is to rush the case and risk fucking it up or be thorough and thus give the case a chance to succeed.
What makes me so certain? The aforementioned rules.

Any contempt referral is by definition complicated. To give you an idea, I will once again post this link:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/litman-don-t-be-too-sure-about-the-doj-s-duty-to-indict-bannon/ar-AAPQAeq

[Silent3]

17. Actually OLC memos are binding *unless overturned by the Attorney General or President*

So Garland has the power to clear such hurdles if, you know, he considers Congress being rendered toothless and creeping fascism sufficient motivation to expedite things. YMMV.

Whether DoJ has followed all of its internal procedures, by the way, has no bearing AFAIK on prosecution of the case. Only the letter-of-the-law on contempt. I do not believe Bannon can defend himself in court by claiming the DoJ wasn't careful about their own internal procedures. He can only defend himself if there's a legal hole in the case they present in court.

I don't see anything in that article you linked to that says the case is at all tricky when it comes to Bannon's actual guilt of committing contempt of Congress.

[Beastly Boy]

19. Do you propose that Garland overturn all of them? Some of them? One of them?

Which one? And to what effect?

And, assuming that all the OLC memos which stand in the way of advancing the matter past the DC Attorney General's office are overturned by Garland, don't you think it will raise obstacles in convening a grand jury? A request to convene has to be granted by the courts. Don't you think such unilateral action on Garland's part will piss off the Judiciary branch?

[Silent3]

20. Whichever ones are in the way

We've gone too far already in making the executive branch too powerful in relation to the legislative. It's about time to turn back some of this excessive protection of Presidents.

And why should the judicial branch give a damn what internal procedures were followed by the DoJ? Their job is to look at the merits of the case itself the DoJ brings to court, not the process that produces the case (unless the process was so out of bounds it tainted evidence or intimidated witnesses or the like).

If some judges do care for some reason, let it piss them off. I'm more concerned about saving our Democracy, not someone else excessive fondness for protocol.

[Beastly Boy]

23. Garland is part of the executive branch

If you argue that it is too powerful, Garland overturning established rules and precedents because they are "in the way", if allowed to stand, will only make the executive more powerful. Imagine if Barr were to overturn the directives in OLC memos at will, because they are "in the way". How unconstitutional would that be?

And the Judicial will care because such unilateral action will certainly disrupt the balance of power between the three branches of government. And if they didn't care, that would be the end of the checks and balances and the end of the three co-equal branches.

How do you propose to save our democracy when you argue in favor of destroying the foundation of our Constitution?

[Silent3]

25. I'm talking specifically about the imperial presidency

And going so far out of the way to protect the president from accountability.

[Beastly Boy]

26. Garland was appointed by Biden.

I am pretty sure you are not referring to Biden's presidency as "imperial", are you?

Are you saying that Garland is protecting Trump from accountability? Can you define "going so far out of the way"? This is pure conjecture at best. What evidence do you have? Is there any specific information in your possession that would suggest he went out of the way at all to protect Trump in any way? As far as I can tell, it is absence of any information, not its presence, that prompted you to accuse Garland of protecting the the president from accountability. This is far from being specific.

[Silent3]

27. The "imperial presidency" isn't about any specific President

It's policies (note, these are not laws passed by Congress, not rulings imposed by court decisions) like the DoJ deciding a sitting president shouldn't be charged, for example, or bending over backwards to protect any President from scrutiny and oversight.

Those kinds of policies don't deserve to be treated as sacred, inviolable traditions.

[Beastly Boy]

28. If your objection is this general, what does it have to do with Garland at all?

Is he somehow the embodiment of imperial presidency? Do the OLC memos you presume any AG can disregard with impunity represent the kinds of policies that "don't deserve to be treated as sacred, inviolable traditions"? If you are not referring to Garland or the OLC memos anymore, I am afraid you lost me. All of my posts you replied to with criticism of a specific AG are about that specific AG who is serving at the pleasure of a specific President and is bound by a specific set of OLC memos.

[Silent3]

29. It's Garland's choice if he's kowtows to bad precedents...

…or realizes the far more important and pressing issues this country is facing. In case you hadn’t noticed, we might totally lose democracy in this country, and I’m hardly talking about Garland having to behave anywhere close to as bad as those who threaten democracy in order to help save it.

It’s a simple matter of not bringing a plastic butter knife to a machine gun fight.

[Beastly Boy]

30. Now you are running in circles.

It's not Garland's choice. He is bound by the same rules as all other AGs who preceded him were. You keep ignoring the disastrous consequences of breaking these rules. Were he to make it his choice, he would end up outside the established legal framework, and in the extremely unlikely event of successfully doing so, he would establish a disastrous precedent for other AGs to ignore and bend rules that were put on place to reign in their power.

OLC memos are not bad precedents. They served this country well for decades. They very likely saved us from Barr meddling in the 2020 elections to favor Trump. And if you are suggesting that the AG is to administer justice arbitrarily and based on circumstances, you are calling for a lawless society, a society no better than the one envisioned by Bannon. The price you are suggesting to pay for convicting Bannon of a misdemeanor would insure his eventual victory.

It's not that simple. You can't bring checkers to a chess match.

[Silent3]

31. What circles, other than you simply gainsaying what I said?

I looked it up. Garland does have a choice. If the article I found that says an AG can overrule OLC precedent is incorrect about that, show me a more accurate resource.

As for disastrous precedent, I consider the Mueller report a disastrous precedent. As far as I am concerned, Trump should have been charged. And Barr wasn't held back very much by anything else that I can tell other than perhaps some concern for his own reputation, or outright breaking criminal law rather than mere internal DoJ policy. We have found out that Barr definitely stood in Mueller's way, blocking his access to many resources.

Not only did Mueller loyally stick to a bad OLC policy (not that he personally had the power to overrule it himself), but he went further, reasoning that if the President can't be charged, he shouldn't even hint that the President would have been charged if he weren't protect by OLC policy. All Mueller would do is very weakly hint that if there was any wrong the President had done, impeachment was the way to handle it.

The country was not served well at all by allowing Trump's corruption to go on not only unimpeded, but emboldened.

Of course, I'm not personally an expert on the justice system, but if the likes of Lawrence Tribe have lost patience with Garland, and Neal Katyal has about one more week of patience left, I feel I'm in pretty good non-circular company.

Chess vs. checkers? As if Garland in being cleverly strategic? What strategic good is it to carefully protect questionable precedents, which only serve well (when they do) in an actual democracy, when holding back means that the democracy you're trying to protect might not even exist in the future because you acted so timidly?

[Beastly Boy]

34. You are either misunderstanding or disregarding the content of my post.

The choice you are proposing leads to far worse consequences than adhering to OLCs. What I clearly meant was that Garland is not an idiot to make an idiotic choice.

And you are comparing apples to oranges. Mueller was not an AG.By your own admission, he was in no position to disregard any of the OLC memos. He was tasked by the deputy AG Rosenstein, who appointed him, to investigate Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and report his findings back to the AG. Not prosecute, not petition for a grand jury, and certainly nt to ignore the OLC memos. Investigate and report. He did exactly that. How in hell did he create a disastrous precedent by completing the job he was tasked with? It is the best precedent he could have possibly created in his position. Would insubordination have been a less disastrous precedent? Make no mistake, speculating about what would have happened were it not for an established DOJ policy IS a call for insubordination. And can you cite any legal authority besides your own who ever argued that the collection of OLC memos constitutes bad policy?

But I never invited you to bring Mueller into this thread. Your criticism of Mueller, flawed as it is, doesn't belong in this thread. How well the coubtry was served or not by Mueller's report, and who exactly is at fault for that is a separate issue that doesn't reflect on Garland. Back to subject at hand, neither Tribe not Katyal, nor any other legal pundit I know of, called for reversal of a single OLC guideline to expedite Garland's investigation. The few that offered critical opinions on the matter, expressed various degrees of dissatisfaction with the pace of the investigation. They did not offer any remedy to satisfy their criticism other than "hurry up", and they certainly didn't call on Garland to disregard existing DOJ policies, let alone describe them as questionable. To be consistent, you would have to accuse them of protecting questionable precedents as well, as you did Garland. So the good company you claim as your own, is not your company, I am afraid.

And your last sentence is very telling, as I suspected all along: "What strategic good is it to carefully protect questionable precedents, which only serve well (when they do) in an actual democracy, when holding back means that the democracy you're trying to protect might not even exist in the future because you acted so timidly?" You acknowledge, with some rservation, that the precedents you are referring to as questionable serve well in an actual democracy. Did it ever occur to you that the relationship between these protections and an actual democracy go both ways, and that without these protections, however tenuous you may consider them, actual democracy will suffer irreparable damage? As I mentioned before, you are essentially advocating for Bannon's immediate victory rather than let democracy have a chance.

[Silent3]

35. I simply don't concur that all DoJ and OLC policy is and always has been to protect democracy

I see a lot of it as being there to protect the powerful, not the people. I brought up Mueller as an example of those policies failing us, to counter the notion that blind adherence to OLC memos and other DoJ policies by Garland is somehow necessary to save us from something that somehow would be worse. You talk as if treating OLC memos as anything other than sacred edicts is all that stands between civilization and the abyss.

I see no slippery slope where quickly charging Bannon with contempt is somehow a win for Bannon.

I see no slippery slope where quickly giving Congressional subpoenas some actual teeth (don't forget that speed is an important part of the power of a subpoena) leads to the downfall of democracy faster than letting Bannon et al blow off Congressional subpoenas, faster than failing to prosecute the ringleaders of 1/6.

[Silent3]

33. And now Mark Meadows refuses to comply with a subpoena

How's this brilliant chess game of Garland's working out for you?

[Beastly Boy]

36. Oh yeah, Meadows would have folded if only Garland stopped his investigation midstream!

Let me guess: you fully expected all other subpoenaed Trumpsters to comply. But Garland was twiddling his thumbs, and now it will never happen. Did I get this right?

It's not even checkers you are moving around on your chess board, it's more like pebble stones.

[Silent3]

38. Stopped what investigation?

You imagine an "investigation" is going on right now? What investigation? Gathering the data to show that Bannon is 99.999% likely to be found guilty, because charging Bannon when he's only 99.99% likely to be found guilty would be too intemperate and wildly undemocratic?

I can't be sure Meadows wouldn't stonewall no matter what, but he's certainly emboldened to stonewall when he sees Bannon paying no penalty for contempt. They're both playing the game of running out the clock, and it's because the real world keeps teaching them that running out the clock works. Garland doesn't seem to care if he helps the game of running out the clock keep working.

[Beastly Boy]

39. This investigation:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/12/politics/steve-bannon-indicted/index.html

A humiliating lesson in speaking out of turn.

[Silent3]

40. I'm glad something finally happened

My impatience at least wasn't all that out-of-whack with the actually timing of things, since I hadn't gotten so concerned about stalling and inaction until this week.

You, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy if things were to drag out for weeks, months, years, or never, so long as non-legally-binding procedures were followed with anal-retentive precision at whatever pace the DoJ deigned to take.

For all I know, it's the growing impatience that many people have had that helped kick things into higher gear, so I'll admit I may have misjudged Garland somewhat, but I'm not at all apologetic for well-deserved impatience.

[Beastly Boy]

41. And, of course you have no evidence for what you are are suggesting.

Pure conjecture, as usual.

This is getting tiresome. Enjoy your well deserved rebuttal by Garland himself.

[Silent3]

42. As if you presented evidence...

…rather than mere “trust the system” complacency?

[triron]

15. For sure. If this was a Barr DOJ with a republican congress, Bannon would already be in jail.

[Boydog]

21. So what the hell is Garland doing?

In your opinion

[Silent3]

22. Wanking off to Judge Judy fan fiction, for all I know

Not all of what he should be doing, whatever else he might be up to.

[Boydog]

14. Every day of silence and inaction by Garland

is a pat on the back for Trump, Bannon and all those who would destroy our democracy. The forces of Donald Trump can not be dealt with by diplomacy and statesmanship. You may not like it and I hate to say it, but it’s true. We will be left to our own devices to deal with vermin like Trump and Bannon because of the timidity of Merrick Garland.

[triron]

16. Garland is a version of Neville Chamberlain.

[Beastly Boy]

18. I will accept this as your opinion.

But you must realize that it is not a factual statement and it doesn't create in Garland a sense of obligation. It is not even reflective of what Garland is doing or not doing.

I am still not clear about how exactly Garland is playing into Bannon's hands, or what exactly Garland should do to satisfy your standards for accountability, or how Bannon's freedom of speech makes Garland culpable.

[Dave says]

32. The J6 committee should subpoena Garland,

have him come in to testify what's taking so long to enforce thee Bannon subpoena.

[Ohio Joe]

37. Why the Justice Department is Taking So Long to Indict Steve Bannon

https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-justice-department-taking-so-long-indict-steve-bannon