Steve Bannon's Lawyer Gets Humiliated By Judge

Steve Bannon's lawyers were in court this past week trying to prevent their client from going to jail for violating a Congressional subpoena. The lawyers ended up getting utterly humiliated by the judge overseeing the case when they tried to argue that Bannon had "executive privilege" and therefore couldn't be compelled to testify. The judge made very short work of that argument by getting the lawyers to admit that privilege couldn't exist in that case. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

On Thursday, Steve Bannon's legal team went to court to tell Judge Cornelia pilled that their client should not in fact go to jail for defying a congressional subpoena from the January 6th select committee because get this Judge Pilled, our guy, Mr. Bannon here, was protected via executive privilege because he was a member of the Trump administration. So he doesn't have to comply with a subpoena to tell him to come in and reveal all these things that were covered under executive privilege. Therefore, you cannot send him to jail for doing that. Well, judge Pill responded pretty much the way you would expect Judge Pill to respond by essentially telling them like, yeah, that's not a thing. But she did it far more professional than I would have, which maybe that's why I'm not a judge. Also didn't go to law school, so that probably helps too. Uh, here's what she said.

First of all, Bannon's lawyer said, quote, the privilege is presumptively valid to its Judge Pilled respond, uh, responded Well, it's just, that's so broad to say it's presumptively valid. Even at its broadest where the Office of Legal Counsel has written, for example, that a former senior official can assert an absolute testimonial immunity. It only covers communications within the scope of that former senior official service in the White House. And none of the conducted issues here was during Mr. Bannon's service in the White House. Was it None of it. And the attorney who just tried to argue that he's covered from executive privilege said, uh, right. Judge it, it was during the presidency, and then the judge asked, but not during Mr. Bannon's service, to which the attorney, attorney sheepishly responded. Correct, your Honor. So Bannon's lawyers, apparently of the same legal caliber as Donald Trump's lawyers, uh, they go to the judge and they say, Hey judge, our dude's got executive privilege, which basically means testimonial immunity didn't have to comply with the subpoena, therefore he cannot go to jail.

And the judge says, listen, um, that executive privilege only covers communications from inside, you know, back and forth, essentially to the president of the United States. And the, the attorney's like, yeah, that's right. And the judge says, but your guy, your guy wasn't a part of the administration during the time period that he was gonna have to testify for. Isn't that right? And the lawyer was like, yep, shucks shouldn't have said that. Right? Because you just admitted that your client doesn't get the very thing that you literally went to court to argue that he should get. So no executive privilege for you buddy boy. But I gotta hand it to these lawyers, to be perfectly honest with you. They knew

This going in. They knew that exec, they know what executive privilege covers by the way, a hundred percent. They know what executive privilege covers. They were effectively throwing the spaghetti on the wall to see if any of it was gonna stick, and none of it did. Now they got this big old mess to clean up. They all look like idiots. And Steve Bannon will probably end up going to jail, not just because his lawyers are, you know, horrible at this, but because he has no actual defense for defying that congressional subpoena last year, there is no defense of it. So it is what it is. But don't get your hopes up too much, folks. Right? Steve Bannon's not gonna go be locked away for, you know, a couple of years. It'll be a couple months. That's it. Probably get out earlier than we would expect him to. So this is gonna be more like a really horrible, horrible vacation for Steve Bannon than an actual punishment. But it will happen nevertheless. And I guess we could take a little solace in that, right?