Transcript
Jack Posobiec: First, I wanted to bring in and kick off the entire show with Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project to talk about the fact that we’re in day one of the show trial of Steven K. Bannon. He’s over there, walked in with the smile on his face. I don’t know if you have the video? But the Prettyman Federal Courthouse, just down the street from where we sit here in Washington D.C.. He walked in with a smile on his face waving to a, waving to the cameras as he goes in. Today will be jury selection in that trial. Of course, the DC jury pool, probably not going to be very favorable to someone with the name of Steven K. Bannon, and we’ve already seen that the judge in the case has denied almost every single legal recourse and defense to him in the case, so there isn’t going to be much. In fact the prosecutors actually came out, I read this is in the Washington Post, over the weekend that they said it may only be a one-day case for the prosecution. But let’s bring, do we have Mike here? So, Mike, tell us where do we sit, what does it mean that, when you guys like Clapper, when you got guys like Brennan, who blatantly lie through their teeth, material falsehoods, to Congress, never charged. Eric Holder refuses to turn over actual documents, right, from Fast and Furious to the Congress. None of these people are charged with material false statements. But you have a situation like this where you have to go back and 50 years to G. Gordon Liddy and Watergate to find someone who is convicted of contempt of congress. But now Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief strategist of the President of the United States is being put on a show trial for this, and I think that most of the country, and I’m going to, I’m just going to cut the crap right. Both sides know that the only reason he’s there is because of the effectiveness of the War Room posse, the effectiveness of the national populist movement, and the fact that he was the architect of so much of the Maga movement, the 2016 victory, and they’re trying to take him off the playing field for 2024. This is the regime going after the opposition. What say you might Mike Davis?
Mike Davis: Well, I agree, Jack, and if you look at Attorney General Merrick Garland, when he went into this job most people thought that this would be a sober adult in this role. He’s a former federal judge on the DC circuit, the second highest court in the land, and I think people have been shocked that he has, he has so politicized the justice department. This is the attorney general who sicked the FBI after parents legally protesting at public school board meetings in Loudoun County. He has sent the FBI to hunt down every grandma and goofball who merely trespassed into the Capitol and took selfies on January 6th. He’s pursuing
Jack Posobiec: But not only that, we’ve got, not to cut you off, but we have a 69 year old grandmother with cancer is now, from Idaho, is now going behind bars, from a federal judge ordering her to be sentence for, and I look this up, parading in the Capitol. Nonviolent offender, parading the capital, 69 year old cancer survivor. Yet we’re going to march around the world, and we’re going to talk about like we’re some moral better when we go over to the Saudis, and go over to the Russians, we go to the Chinese, the North Koreans, and say we don’t do things like this, when we are quite literally doing things like this.
Mike Davis: Yeah, I mean, she’s going to jail for 60 days and she has cancer and it’s ridiculous. She merely trespassed into the Capitol. Yeah, that’s a that’s a crime, they should be punished, but 60 days in jail for a 69 year old grandmother with no prior criminal history for taking selfies, it’s ridiculous. This whole January 6th, this whole January 6th committee is a charade. And so, these are all members appointed by Nancy Pelosi the Republicans are even appointed by Nancy Pelosi. They’re working hand-in-glove with Merrick Garland and the Biden justice department. Let me just, just give you some perspective here. I was the chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I ran 30 hearings, 41 markup meetings. I ran a lot of these things, and during the Kavanagh proceedings, Justice Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation proceedings, we had our committee disrupted constantly for the first two hours of the proceedings. Nothing happened to those people. They didn’t get charged with parading, parading in the Senate. We had Senators harassed. We had Senators chased into private elevators and intimidated. Nothing happened.
Jack Posobiec: Jeff Flake in the elevator, right, everyone remembers that.
Mike Davis: Nothing happens, nothing happened at all. We had Michael Avenatti, who clearly made false statements to the committee on behalf of his sleazebag client, Julie Swetnick, a then, then Chairman Chuck Grassley, my former boss, made two criminal referrals to the justice department for obvious blatant lies to the committee and obstruction of the Senate proceedings. The justice department didn’t even respond to the Chairman’s letter. But yet we’re going to do these unprecedented prosecution of Steve Bannon and [Peter] Navarro for contempt of congress. This has never happened. This is a political witch-hunt and the Garland justice department is working hand-in-glove with these partisan hacks and Trump deranged RINOs on the January 6th committee to go after Bannon. He asserted a valid claim for executive privilege. We’ve had executive privilege going back to our founding so presidents can have candid discussions with their advisers . If the committee thought it was an invalid claim of executive privilege . . .
Jack Posobiec: Mike, Mike, let’s break that down a little bit. Why is executive privilege so important? Why do you need a separate executive who can have these discussions with his advisors, both, whether there in the White House or out, right. I keep hearing MSNBC make this argument about Steve. Oh he wasn’t currently employed at the time, right. Why is it so important for that to be kept as a privileged conversation, away from the legislative? How would that work out?
Mike Davis: Well, its, under our founding fathers understood that the president had to be able to operate in secrecy, at times, and be able to trust his advisors, be able to trust that he’s having candid discussions with his advisors so he can perform his critical executive function of running the executive branch of the government. And we’ve had executive privilege going back to George Washington. And so presidents have asserted executive privilege and former presidents of this have asserted executive privilege and current president’s maintain those assertions of executive privilege for the from former president. In this case, there’s a, Steve Bannon is alleging that President Trump asserted executive privilege and Steve Bannon presented a letter recently that President Trump said he was waving executive privilege for Bannon so he can testify. But there was an assertion of executive privilege. Now, if the justice department, if the committee of the January 6th kangaroo commission, didn’t think it was a valid of assertion of executive privilege, they could have litigated that Court. Instead they did this unprecedented move of a pursuing criminal charges against Steve Bannon, something that just doesn’t happen. You mentioned several people who they didn’t pursue criminal charges for, Jack, including Eric Holder. They also didn’t pursue criminal charges for Lois Lerner at the IRS when she defied a congressional subpoena. So this is, this is a partisan witch hunt and that the the Biden justice department is working hand-in-glove with these partisan hacks on the January 6th committee and this is, this should have been resolved through a through civil litigation to resolve the claim of executive privilege. Instead they went right to criminal prosecution.
Jack Posobiec: Well, not only that but, when I look back and you think about these issues, right, from a constitutional standpoint from the having separate but co-equal branches, if you had, if you took away executive privilege, you would then have the legislative, anytime you had a case where there was a President of one party and a Congress of another party, they would spend their entire time litigating the president subpoenaing, subpoenaing this, subpoenaing that, subpoenaing this, subpoenaing that, all day long. They would gum up everything that the administration was trying to do. Of course, they would try to stop this, because that’s what they would do as an opposition party. And the founders understood this. They understood for the singleness of the president. If you’re going to have an executive branch, then you have to have a serious executive who has the ability to function as an executive, We never had a king, but we’re going to have that executive. But also, we’re going to get into this a little bit in the next segment and we’re going to bring in Viva Frei here. We got one minute left. Viva’s got some announcements he’s going to break out in terms of a special limited series podcast that he’s putting together all for this week. But also I want to get into, number one, how they’ve taken away the defenses that Steve Bannon would be able to present during this trial, and number two, the constitutional constituency of this, of the actual committee itself, for January 6th. What is it properly constituted. Because, as we can see in these hearings, there’s no cross-examination. Ironically, of course, Steve will have the ability to cross-examine witnesses if they even present any at the, at the end his actual trial, in a way though, you would not see at the Committee hearing itself. All this, and more coming up ahead, just behind the break, War Room continues.
BREAKING: The Post Millennial announces exclusive podcast series ‘The Trial of Steve Bannon’ with Viva Frei
Jack Posobiec: I want to go back now to Mike Davis of the Article III Project and finish up the conversation we were having just before the break because we were talking about how the January 6th committee has been constituted and the fact that anybody who spent any time watching these completely ridiculous hearings, or if you watched the end. I don’t know if anyone actually watch. Producer Cameron let me know if anyone in the live chat is mentioning this. But the hit piece that was done on War Room by CNN over this weekend, which is kind of amazing to me. It was sort of like the greatest hits of War Room, plus just this ominous music, you know, War Room, you know, were going the evil on them. But, you know, and they put like these interlacing lines on top of the screen as if you’re watching a bad ’90s graphic or something with one of those VHS horror movies. But, it was ridiculous, and they said well if your just anyone who watches War Room, the whole thing was done as a jury tampering, jury influence operation the night before, of course, what here the jury selection begins today in Washington DC which is taking place just down the street as we sit. We are here in the War Room. Steve K Bannon in the Prettyman Federal Courthouse as his show trial sets to get underway. But going back to the Constitutional issues, Mike, you were talking about how the Jan 6 Committee, there’s no cross-examination of witnesses. Now, Steve of course, at during what year and during the actual trial itself, he will have the ability to mount an effective defense and, if he so chooses, his lawyer and his legal team can cross-examine the witnesses. But we don’t have any of that in the January 6th Committee and to the heart of the Constitutional problems with this committee?
Mike Davis: Well, I mean this committee is clearly, clearly this committee couldn’t present their evidence that they did on TV, it wouldn’t get into court, right. It’s not subject to cross-examination. There’s a lot of hearsay that would have serious constitutional problems in a court of law, but this is a kangaroo court. This January 6th commission is it, it’s like, I don’t even think they’re even trying to be fair at this point. They’re, they’re not allowing the Republicans to appoint their own members, which has been the tradition for every committee going back to our founding, that the minority has a rule with these committees and speaker Nancy Pelosi just ignore that and she handpicked two Trump deranged RINOs, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, to be the Republican members of this committee. Its just, it’s it’s the how its constituted is completely fundamentally unfair from the beginning.
Jack Posobiec: I want to bring Mike Davis back in. We’ve got a couple of minutes left in the segment and I wanted to touch on something, Viva, you’ve just brought up regarding appeals. Mike, can you walk us through, is this something that you see as turning, going over on appeal, could be a potentially overturned if there is a conviction and because of there’s so many constitutional questions in this. Is this something that we could potentially see before this Supreme Court.
Mike Davis: Well, the DC court would hear this appeal. Unfortunately Obama stack the DC circuit with some left-wing activists so Bannon would have an uphill fight there, but I will say that he certainly has serious legal issues for appeal because the judge deprived him of his right to defend himself. The judge said that he couldn’t even talk about the fact that President Trump asserted Executive Privilege and that President Trump withdrew that assertion of Executive Privilege. Bannon can’t talk about the fact that he’s relying on advice of his attorney when he didn’t cooperate with the House subpoena, based on this assertion of executive privilege. It’s puzzling to me why this judge won’t let Bannon present that defense to the jury today, I mean, that is a clear defense, that President Trump asserted Executive Privilege, so he couldn’t, he could not comply with a subpoena.
Jack Posobiec: And so the question then would go to the court because, it’s my understanding that this has yet to be ruled on at any Supreme Court because this is a, this is the type of charge that we do not see. It’s extremely rare, certainly the modern era to see anything like this that, we don’t even have any precedent necessarily for the President of the United States speaking to an outside advisor while currently the occupant of the Office of the President of the United States. Does Executive Privilege extend to that? It would seem that it does, and Alan Dershowitz came on this very program right, the Alan Dershowitz came on this program just one week ago and stated that it is a valid claim of Executive Privilege. Final thoughts, Mike Davis.
Mike Davis: Well I would say this. Here’s my final thought. We have Supreme Court justices being harassed and intimidated in their homes, clearly in violation of federal obstruction of justice statutes. Merrick Garland won’t do a damn thing about these harassment and intimidation campaigns on Supreme Court Justices, another branch of government, yet they’re going to go out of their way to go after Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for obstruction of congress over this, after they’re asserting, asserting a valid claim of Executive Privilege.
Jack Posobiec: It’s a clear case of selective prosecution.
