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Former Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon is indicted

Former Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon is indicted

The former president’s 2016 campaign chairman and intellectual leader of the white nationalist pro-Trump movement was arrested on Monday after his indictment by a federal grand jury for the second time in 18 months. 

Steve Bannon is being charged by the Department of Justice with two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress.

He surrendered to the FBI early this morning and will face arraignment in front of a federal magistrate judge this afternoon.

If convicted for his crimes, the sentences could carry a maximum of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine per count for defying two subpoenas from the House’s January 6th Select Committee which is investigating the Trump campaign’s coup attempt earlier this year.

In late September, the House committee sent the compulsory demands for documents and deposition testimony to Bannon, only to be met with open defiance by the former Trump advisor.

Three weeks later, the panel voted to hold him in criminal contempt, referring the matter to the full chamber who referred the criminal charge to the Department of Justice nine days after that. Late Friday, CNN broke the news that Bannon would face justice for the crime of defying Congress:

A prosecutor with the US attorney’s office presented evidence to the grand jury on Friday, CNN was able to confirm. Prosecutors on Friday afternoon presented an indictment and arrest warrant to federal Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather.
The judge signed the warrant for an indicted defendant with the initials “SB,” according to CNN reporters in the courtroom. A source familiar with the matter confirmed SB was Steve Bannon. Soon after, the Justice Department announced that Bannon had been indicted.

The former Trump advisor becomes the first person charged with criminal contempt of Congress since 1983. 

Steven K. Bannon is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who rose to national political prominence at Breitbart.com backed by a far-right-wing billionaire before taking the helm of the 2016 Trump general election campaign.

Only seven months after Trump’s improbable inauguration, he fired Bannon as a senior advisor, and five months after that he was exiled entirely.

Last year, he was indicted in New York’s Southern District court for stealing a million dollars from Trump supporters who donated to the private wall GoFundMe campaign which begat failed WeBuildTheWall organization, due to this journalist’s reporting

But when the authoritarian former president needed help trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral victory one year ago, he turned to Steve Bannon to lead the charge, and after the January 6th insurrection failed Trump pardoned his frenemy’s crimes.

In the final hours of his one-term presidency, Trump issued a pardon to Bannon along with scores of cronies and Republican politicians.

Since then, the former White House advisor has stayed in the news with his lie-filled podcast attacking the roots of America’s democratic process and for the novel state criminal investigation by the Manhattan DA and New York Attorney General’s office, that surfaced this past March, which is probing his money laundering and fraud crimes with WeBuildTheWall.

Now, Congress and the DOJ have beat New York’s authorities to the punch by prosecuting the white nationalist movement’s Svengali for committing yet another round of crimes.

Grant Stern
is the Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats and published author. His new Meet the Candidates 2020 book series is distributed by Simon and Schuster. He's also mortgage broker, community activist and radio personality in Miami, Florida., as well as the producer of the Dworkin Report podcast. Grant is also an occasional contributor to Raw Story, Alternet, and the DC Report, and an unpaid senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition and a Director of Sunshine Agenda Inc. a government transparency nonprofit organization. Get all of his stories sent directly to your inbox here:

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