Kay Nietfeld/Getty
What started as a Steve Bannon public relations stunt may have just ended as a spectacular self-own.
After nine months of refusing to answer the House Jan. 6 Committee’s questions—and fighting off related criminal contempt charges in court—the right-wing provocateur is suddenly dangling an offer to finally testify. The gambit is supposed to make the Justice Department look bad. But doing so on the eve of trial risks having him incriminate himself before Congress, then get convicted the very next week.
On Saturday, after what inside sources described as a week-long effort to convince former President Donald Trump’s inner circle, Bannon’s legal team managed to convince Trump to issue a letter waiving executive privilege. The letter allows his former White House chief strategist to testify before the Jan. 6 committee. (Never mind that a federal judge, an appellate panel, and even the Supreme Court have already said the ex-president doesn’t have any executive privilege to assert or waive anyway.)