By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — “It’s a fine Navy day,” Bannon said with a big smile for the press when he showed up for court with a haircut and a shave on Monday in Washington, D.C., just down the street from the Capitol where “all hell” broke loose on January 6, 2021.

Appearing in grey slacks, a black T-shirt under a black collared shirt, and a black jacket with no tie like he was going to a wake, Bannon acted all smug in his famousness to be on TeeVee again. Someone forgot to tell him this was a perp walk, not a red carpet Hollywood event.

Steve Bannon arrives at court for contempt trial
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Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon arrived at court on July 18 as jury selection began for his contempt of Congress trial. (Video: Reuters)

Bannon, who Trump nicknamed “Sloppy Steve” for his often disheveled appearance, is a prominent member of Trump’s so-called “brain trust.” I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but there it is. Those in the know say he is an “evil genius” for Trump’s campaigns like Karl Rove was for George W. Bush. He’s not shied away from being called an “architect” of Trump’s seditious conspiracy to incite an insurrection and halt the peaceful transfer of power to overturn an election with a falsified “Stop the Steal” campaign claiming election fraud by the other side.

Jury selection got underway on Monday for the Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with an order from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol attack to turn over records and testify about his actions in advance of the Jan. 6 insurrection and attempted coup, as Committee Chair Bernie Thompson has called it on multiple occassions.

Bannon chose to ignore a subpoena from the committee where members want to question him about activities at the Willard Hotel the night before the Capitol attack, when supporters of President Donald Trump tried to press Republicans in Congress and the Vice President to halt the vote counting and turn the process over to the House or a fake slate of state electors.

The committee has evidence that Bannon spoke with Trump by telephone on Jan. 5, and in the morning and evening of Jan. 6, after Bannon predicted “all hell is going to break loose” on Jan. 6. The committee recommended that the Department of Justice charge him with contempt and prosecute him, since he clearly “had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”

Bannon tried to claim executive privilege, at the behest of Trump and one of his lawyers. But during a pretrial hearing earlier in July, a federal judge rejected that notion. U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols threw out several of Bannon’s defenses, including the executive privilege claim, and narrowed his defense at trial simply to whether he understood the deadlines for answering the demands of the committee, or not.

The judge agreed with the federal prosecutor in the case, that by binding legal precedent, Bannon’s reasons for not complying with the subpoenas were irrelevant if he willfully disregarded them. The judge also disputed former president Trump’s assertion of executive privilege for Bannon, and ruled that the conversations in question would not be covered anyway since Bannon was fired from the White House in 2017 and was a private citizen when attempting to help orchestrate Trump’s coup attempt.

Bannon vowed to go ‘medieval’ on the court. But he showed up all clean cut and ready to throw himself on the mercy of the court for posterity’s sake on Monday, banking on an “infamous” tag in history like others who have fallen on the sword for their king.

Bannon is the former executive editor of Brietbart News and an early leader of the so-called “Tea Party,” who boasted of creating a “platform for the alt-right.” He has championed “populist-nationalist” movements in Eastern Europe since chairing Trump’s campaign in the final months of the 2016, when he worked with libertarian billionaires Robert and Rebecca Mercer to mine massive amounts of data from Facebook to manipulate ads on the social media platform to demonize Hillary Clinton.

While he has at times tried to deny any direct responsibility for the violence that resulted in deaths and injuries of police officers and others on Jan. 6, he has publicly claimed credit for being an “ideological architect” of the efforts to take the election back from winner Joe Biden and hand Trump a dictatorship on a bloody platter.

Related: Steve Bannon Was a Key Architect of Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Strategy

Bannon goes on trial at a time of heightened interest in Washington as hearings are being held and televised by Congress to get to the bottom of what happened on Jan. 6, the worst attack on the Capitol since 1812.

The two counts of contempt he is charged with are misdemeanors, each punishable by at least 30 days or up to one year in prison upon conviction, along with possible fines.

Trials based on such charges are extremely rare, however, and three known previous offenders who pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress dating to the 1990s received probation in plea deals with federal prosecutors.

Since the trial has now begun and a jury is being seated, though, means it may be too late for Bannon to reach a deal and agree to testify before the committee instead. Political insiders are pushing for a sentence of at least six months, to keep him out of any election tampering skullduggery in November.

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