Steve Bannon should be in jail for contempt of Congress, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Los Angeles) and House Republican leadership are trying to save him.
Johnson issued a statement:
A bipartisan legal advisory group voted 3-2 to file a brief in the case against Steve Bannon with the D.C. Circuit Court. The amicus brief will be filed after Bannon files his petition for rehearing en banc and will not support either side.
It would withdraw certain arguments the House made earlier in the lawsuit regarding the formation of a special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol during the last Congress. House Republican leadership still believes Speaker Pelosi abused her power in organizing the special committee.
Johnson and the House Republican leadership believe that the 1/6 Committee was illegally established, so they believe that Bannon’s contempt of Congress conviction should be dismissed.
The argument that the 1/6 committee is illegal has been tried in other cases over the years without ever getting anywhere, but Johnson is trying again because Trump doesn’t want to see his former campaign manager and White House adviser locked up.
Instead of trying to make the case to voters that they should keep their House majority, Republicans are doing Trump’s bidding because their majority has been built to serve a former president’s districts while ignoring the American people.
