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Bannon and many others before him have said they have Executive privilege.
As defined by Cornell Law School, Executive privilege is:
“The power of the President and other officials in the executive branch to withhold certain forms of confidential communication from the courts and the legislative branch.”
The definition also mentions that the Constitution is “silent on the executive power to withhold information from the courts or Congress” because Executive privilege exists due to the separations of powers doctrine.
The Watergate Scandal is a perfect example of how the law meets Executive privilege head-on.
Cornell Law School states:
“United States v. Nixon, also known as the Watergate Scandal, has established that even a President has a legal duty to provide evidence of one’s communications with his aides when the information is relevant to a criminal case. By requiring the President to turn over recordings of private conversations that he had with his aides, the Court’s decision has helped frame how to define executive privilege in a judicial setting.”
The Watergate Scandal also shows how the branches of government work. The judicial branch interprets the law, but after reading the Federalist Papers, the scandal also showed what the Founding Fathers meant that the Judicial branch could be the most powerful.
Steve Bannon served President Donald Trump as the White House’s chief strategist. He was convicted as a misdemeanor for contempt of Congress because the Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers framed his actions of ignoring a congressional subpoena is like neglecting a parking ticket.
Give credit where credit is due; the DOJ lawyers were clever in their framework.
Truth Tent reported:
Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors told the jury that ignoring a congressional subpoena is like ignoring a parking ticket. DOJ prosecutor Molly Gaston said that with a parking ticket, there are two options: show up to Court and try to fight it or pay it.
‘What he doesn’t get to do is ignore the order to pay it,’ Gaston said, noting that if you don’t pay a ticket or show up for a subpoena, there are consequences.
She argued that Bannon’s excuse that he thought he was barred from testifying due to former President Trump asserting executive privilege did not carry weight.
Gaston said that Bannon made an ‘intentional’ choice not to cooperate and cited quotes Bannon made to DailyMail.com in December when he said he would not be cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee subpoena for testimony. ‘I stand with Trump and the Constitution,’ Bannon said at the time.
‘His belief that he had an excuse not to comply does not matter, that is not a defense to contempt,’ she said. ‘He has contempt for our system of government, and he does not think he needs to play by its rules.’
‘The defendant chose defiance; find him guilty,’ Gaston told jurors.
Bannon’s conviction spread like wildfire, as they typically do for conservatives. Steven Bannon then appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.
Tucker said:
“You can’t kind of help but notice that you were convicted of a crime which is not actually a crime most of the time in Washington or ever.”
Tucker mentions that an attempted murderer of a candidate in New York was released with no bail. Both cases happened on the same day.
Bannon replies:
“Well, as you can tell, the Democrats are completely lawless. Look at how they run this committee. There’s no ranking member, and there’s no minority counsel. It’s not like traditional hearings that have galvanized the nation in the past.”
It’s almost as if life is imitating fiction.
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