Bannon Suggests “Real” Investigation into January 6 Should Republicans Retake the House

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jul. 30, 2022) — In an interview Thursday with Dr. Sebastian Gorka, former White House chief strategist and 2016 Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon suggested that should Republicans win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in November, “real” investigations into the January 6, 2021 incursion at the U.S. Capitol, which Democrats and their allies term “an insurrection,” will undergo closer scrutiny as well as the circumstances surrounding the November 3, 2020 presidential election which then-incumbent President Donald J. Trump believes he won.

Bannon, who was convicted just over a week ago on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to testify and produce documents in response to requests from the January 6 “Select Committee,” said Americans should not focus on his legal battle. “When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna,” he said.

The Select Committee consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans who were handpicked by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat. It lacks the customary ranking member for House and Senate committees and subcommittees. Republican Liz Cheney, designated as “vice-chair,” is openly hostile to Trump and voted in favor of his second impeachment, carried out after January 6, 2021 but resulting in acquittal after Trump left office.

Beginning early last month, the committee held a series of hearings, two of which aired during “prime time,” bringing forth members of Trump’s former White House team in some cases and in others, staffers who claimed Trump did not take proper action once he was aware of the incident at the Capitol.

One witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former staffer to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, claimed she was told Trump angrily told a Secret Service agent to take him to the Capitol during the melee, lunged at the agent and tried to grab the steering wheel of the vehicle, claims both the Secret Service and Trump have roundly refuted.

The “Select Committee” has allowed no cross-examination of witnesses nor anyone to testify who might be supportive of Trump’s position, and many of the interviews have been pre-recorded depositions conducted privately.

“I appreciate everybody’s support, but I would tell people, don’t spend a second talking about Steve Bannon’s contempt charge,” Bannon told Gorka. “We have much more important work ahead of us (2:34) to make sure we win sweeping victories from school boards all the way up to the Senate and the House in just over 100 days, so that’s the work that’s before us.”

Gorka asked Bannon if he “agrees” the Select Committee will send a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump, to which Bannon replied, “I think they’re going to try to come up with something…I think it hurts ’em politically; this thing hasn’t gotten a lot of traction…They may try to do it; remember: they have no bounds.”

Should Republicans win a majority in the House in November, Bannon predicted, “There’s going to be, and there needs to be, for the nation, a real investigation into January 6 and everything around it, and that will start in January after a sweeping victory in the House. I think [Rep.] Jim Jordan and [Rep. Jim] Banks will co-chair it or chair it, and there will be a real select committee. You’ll have a minority ranking member, right, and you’ll have minority counsel, and it’ll be structured like committees have been in the past where you have to play by the rules; they get the ability to look at evidence, cross-examine witnesses, and really have an investigation, and that investigation will go back to the run-up to November third, what was done by the Marc Elias groups and all these groups about how they stole the election, and we’ll get down to adjudicate January third — excuse me, 3 November — the November election in 2020 — and look at all that. We’ll look at all the different states, particularly the battleground states and look at exactly what happened.”

Former Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias represented the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and recently launched his own “mission-driven” law firm. A prominent voice in Democrat politics for some time, Elias was on the forefront of defending against lawsuits launched by the Trump legal team following the November 3, 2020 election.

As for the January 6 incursion into the U.S. Capitol, Bannon said the Republican-led committee will examine “what the FBI knew and FBI assets out there; obviously, Ashli Babbitt; all the carnage that was there; who was involved in it; the 14,000 hours. There’ll be a real investigation; it’ll take many months, and I think it will shock the American people. This show trial will just kind-of — it’s very ephemeral, and it’ll just blow like dust in the wind; it’ll be irrelevant and forgotten, and people will focus on a real investigation.”

Babbitt, an unarmed Air Force veteran who was outside a Capitol entrance in a large crowd that day, was killed by U.S. Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd, with the Justice Department concluding there was “insufficient evidence” that Byrd used “excessive force” in her killing.

A graphic video shows officers not immediately moving to help Babbitt once she was shot and fell to the floor, bleeding profusely.

Among more than 800 arrests, between 80 and 90 people being held as a result of their presence on or around the U.S. Capitol on January 6, near which Trump and others had spoken prior to the eruption of violence, are jailed without trial in draconian conditions, Atty. Joseph McBride, who represents approximately a dozen defendants, told former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani last week.

Exactly one year ago, three members of Congress attempting to visit the “J6” prisoners were refused entrance and were accused of “trespassing” and “obstructing entrance” to the institution.

In 2023 and 2024, Bannon sees a “preamble” to a new presidency in 2025, he said.

At 6:49, without naming anyone, Bannon referred to “the second term; his third victory but the second term.”

“Two things are going to happen: No. 1: We are going to decertify those electors, Wisconsin and Arizona; we’re going to do that in a formal legal process,…starting in January,” he continued, “but then the impeachment will start after we’ve done the investigations of Fauci,…the laptop from hell…of the invasion of the southern border…and also January 6.”

The August 2 primaries will determine what type of Republicans go to Congress, Bannon said.

In regard to Trump, he remarked, “I happen to believe he’s going to announce relatively shortly.”

The entire interview can be viewed here.