Steve Bannon is an awful father and a wife beater

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

A little smiting down here some time in the next 4 years would be good. If Biden wins I'm sure he will not run again in 4 years. I don't think Trump will be in shape to run in 4 years. Also I'm hoping he'll be in prison or will have left the country.

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope they ban him permanently.

[AmazonGrace]

Are the cops beating his door down yet?

[Giraffe]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/05/tech/steve-bannon-twitter-permanent-suspension/index.html

In case anyone's forgotten about him in the last three hours, he's now permanently banned from Twitter.

[hoipolloi]

You'd think Bannon would be in violation of his bond conditions. Throw him in the slammer!

 

[AnywhereButHere]

Quote

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/05/tech/steve-bannon-twitter-permanent-suspension/index.html

And he's banned permanently from Twitter. About damn time...

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

[Howl]

Bannon's name is starting to pop up as a potential bad actor in the Capitol siege (Beer Belly Putsch). 

He's currently under indictment for defrauding donors who gave money for the We Build the Wall scam. He's wily; surely he has enough common sense to keep an extremely low profile. 

[fraurosena]

Manhattan district attorney considering prosecuting Stephen Bannon

Quote

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office is weighing whether to bring a state court case against Stephen K. Bannon, who was indicted on federal fraud charges for his role in a fundraising scheme to build a border wall but received a last-minute pardon from President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bannon, one of the architects of Trump's 2016 election victory and briefly a White House adviser, was among 143 people who received pardons from Trump in his last 24 hours in office. Bannon left the White House early in Trump's term after he fell out with the president, who wavered until the last minute on issuing his former strategist a pardon, The Washington Post reported.

Bannon and three others were charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with falsely claiming that they would not take compensation as part of their "We Build the Wall" fundraising campaign to underwrite part of the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The three others charged with Bannon were not pardoned by Trump.

Investigators working under District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in his office’s Major Economic Crimes Bureau are in early-stage discussions to determine if there’s a state case to be brought against Bannon for his actions in the fundraising campaign, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the office’s deliberations.

It was not clear whether the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is still handling the case against Bannon because it has not yet been formally dismissed, is assisting the state prosecutor’s office in its preliminary investigation. A judicial “sharing order” is required for swapping evidence between the agencies, and it was unclear if one had been obtained.

President Trump on Jan. 19 pardoned his former adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who was charged with fraud in a fundraising effort for a border wall. (Reuters)

A spokesman for Vance declined to comment, as did the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. A lawyer for Bannon did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokeswoman for Bannon had no immediate comment.

Bannon’s pardon — which applies only to federal crimes — was among actions Trump took to resolve or reverse the cases of former associates accused or convicted of federal crimes, including Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, and Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser.

Trump also pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who like Manafort and Stone was convicted as a result of the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election — a probe Trump routinely called a “witch hunt.”

In August, Bannon was accused of personally taking more than $1 million from people who had donated to the “We Build the Wall” campaign and hoped to help secure one of Trump’s signature promises from the 2016 campaign. Construction of the wall was not near completion by the time Trump left office. It had been hailed by the former president as the centerpiece of his effort to curtail illegal immigration.

Bannon, along with Brian ­Kolfage, a disabled Air Force veteran, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea, raised more than $25 million in an online crowdfunding push while promising donors that all of the proceeds would go to support the wall's construction, according to federal prosecutors.

Bannon had been free on a $5 million bond. As he left the courthouse after his arraignment, he ripped off a pandemic mask and told reporters that the “entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”

All four men pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money-laundering charges. The next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 22.

A trial for the three other defendants is scheduled for later this year, although pandemic restrictions may delay the proceeding.

Vance’s office previously brought a case against Manafort, but it was dismissed on “double jeopardy” grounds because he had already been tried in federal court. Vance is trying to appeal the decision to the state’s highest court, with his office claiming a misreading of the law by lower-court judges.

While talks among investigators in Vance’s office are preliminary, the focus is on whether a state case against Bannon covering the same criminal conduct from his federal case would be an option once a judge formally ­dismisses it. Unlike in Vance’s attempted prosecution of Man­afort, double jeopardy probably would not apply given that Bannon has not been convicted at the federal level.

Paul Manafort’s fraud case in New York was dismissed, blocking local prosecutors’ effort to undercut a potential Trump pardon.

According to the federal indictment, victims in the case reside in the Southern District of New York, which covers Manhattan, potentially giving the district attorney jurisdiction. Financial transactions also routinely give jurisdiction to the Manhattan district attorney because most major banking institutions are based or have operations in New York.

Vance’s office is also investigating Trump and the Trump Organization for possible tax and insurance fraud. The probe, which began in 2019, resulted in a Supreme Court hearing over whether Trump could assert presidential immunity to prevent Vance from obtaining tax returns and other records from the accounting firm Mazars USA. The Supreme Court sided with Vance.

Prosecutors have yet to receive the eight years’ worth of records requested through their grand jury subpoena to Mazars because Trump’s legal team has another pending application to the Supreme Court, arguing that Vance’s office acted in bad faith and that the subpoena was too broad.

I wonder if Bannon's acceptance of Trump's pardon, and therefore his admission of guilt, could be used for an eventual state case against him. ?

[GreyhoundFan]

A whole lot of WTAFery here: "Steve Bannon’s vile threats show the GOP’s radicalization is getting worse"

Quote

A raft of new developments shows that the GOP civil war over Donald Trump’s legacy is intensifying. A top Senate Republican has now suggested that candidates in the former president’s mold are unelectable. A Never Trump group just launched ads backing up Republicans who dared to condemn Trump for inciting the insurrection.

Meanwhile, the pro-Trump side keeps mobilizing. Efforts to censure those anti-Trump apostate Republicans are gaining steam. Former White House adviser Reince Priebus is mulling a run for Wisconsin governor on the chief selling point that he’d have Trump’s support.

Into this mayhem has stepped Stephen K. Bannon, who is as attracted to Trump-fueled chaos as insects are to rotting corpses. Trump’s former adviser is now elevating his profile as spokesman for the pro-Trump wing in a way that usefully illuminates the ugly depths of the GOP’s ongoing radicalization.

But the contours of this radicalization also impose an obligation on Democrats — to ensure that nothing impairs a full accounting into Trump’s most recent crime against the country, the effort to incite the violent overthrow of U.S. democracy.

Bannon has entered the fray on two fronts.

A civil war in Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, the GOP civil war is now playing out in a Republican primary in advance of the 2022 Senate campaign over the seat of retiring Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial.

As Politico reports, Toomey’s vote against Trump is now the central issue in that primary, which is becoming a proxy battle between Republicans still loyal to Trump and those who think continued devotion to him will damage the party’s statewide chances. Bannon has moved to put his stamp on the contest.

As Bannon told Politico: “Any candidate who wants to win in Pennsylvania in 2022 must be full Trump MAGA.”

If you are not “full Trump MAGA,” you will be denied the support of Trump loyalists. What does “full Trump MAGA” mean, exactly? Well, it means absolute devotion to the mythology that Trump should not have been held accountable for his effort to incite the violent disruption of the election that was stolen from him.

The rage of the MAGA forces are pouring down on former congressman Ryan Costello, who is mulling a run for Senate and who suggested it’s a bad idea for county parties to censure Toomey for his vote to convict Trump, as some have already done. Costello says the censures “will hurt Republican candidates.”

For this, Bannon scaldingly denounced Costello as “a sellout to the globalists.” The grand populist nationalist vision that once animated Trumpism has been reduced to little more than a demand for unwavering lickspittlery to Trump despite (or perhaps because of) his effort to incite violent insurrection.

Bannon’s rhetoric, of course, might prove an empty threat. But the point is that many Republicans appear to view things exactly as he does. Toomey is being widely condemned in the state, with some Republicans raging at his vote as a betrayal of GOP constituents. And other Republicans who voted against Trump are facing censure in Wyoming and North Carolina.

A loony plot to impeach Biden

Bannon’s second threat is even more comically absurd. He recently told a Boston audience that he hopes to see Trump run for Congress in 2022, then run for speaker of the House (which Bannon presumes Republicans will win), then preside over the impeachment of President Biden:

“We totally get rid of Nancy Pelosi, and the first act of President Trump as speaker will be to impeach Joe Biden for his illegitimate activities of stealing the presidency,” Bannon said, leading to applause and hollers from the Boston Republicans.

This is rank crackpottery, but here again, the singular organizing and motivating principle is the idea that Trump’s loss to Biden couldn’t possibly have been legitimate, or that there’s simply zero obligation on the part of the Trump movement to recognize it as such, and that loyalty to Trump requires unwavering fealty to that idea.

Bannon is a scammer, but many Republicans continue to hew to this mythology in various forms. Large swaths of the GOP propped it up by supporting that lawsuit to toss out millions of votes in four states and by voting to invalidate Biden’s electors in Congress. It is currently shaping numerous local intraparty battles and will continue to do so.

What’s more, the lies that underpin this mythology are now inspiring an intensification of voter suppression and counter-majoritarian tactics in numerous states. This radicalization of the GOP against democracy could have a major impact on our political future.

All of this, I think, imposes an obligation on us to ensure that what happened on Jan. 6 is not memory-holed and gets the full accounting it deserves.

We must have a full accounting

With Democrats launching a commission that will get to the bottom of the insurrection, Republicans are already working overtime to preclude full scrutiny of Trump’s role by pretending this would be unacceptably “partisan.”

In short, Republicans will try to either erase Trump’s role from this full accounting or dramatically downplay it by recasting the whole reckoning process as an examination of security failures at the Capitol or violent extremism on “both sides.”

Those Republicans who want the GOP to fully renounce Trump understand the importance of a full reckoning with the insurrection. Just look at this brutal new ad from the Never Trump Republican Accountability Project, which shows dramatic footage of the violence and calls on Republicans to agree to the following proposition: “This can never happen again.”

Truly grappling with the implications of GOP radicalization absolutely requires a total reconstruction of what Trump’s months-long campaign to overthrow U.S. democracy wrought, so we understand what this movement is capable of in the near and far future. Bannon may be a thug and a grifter, but at least he has made this unavoidably clear.

The idea of the OFM running for congress in 2022, winning, and then getting selected as Speaker of the House is beyond description.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Bannon battling prosecutors who won’t dismiss his case after Trump’s pardon"

Quote

NEW YORK — Stephen K. Bannon, the firebrand political strategist and ex-confidant to former president Donald Trump, is fighting to get his federal fraud case formally dismissed over the strong objection of prosecutors, who have argued that his full pardon does not mean his indictment must be wiped from the record.

Bannon, who helped engineer Trump’s 2016 election win before briefly serving as a White House adviser, asked a judge late Thursday to follow others in New York and elsewhere who outright dismissed cases after Trump issued pardons. To support his bid, Bannon cited the post-pardon dismissals of charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser accused of lying about his contacts with Russian officials, and rapper Lil’ Wayne, who was facing gun charges in Florida.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is preparing for trial against three of Bannon’s co-defendants in an alleged border wall fundraising scam, is seeking an “administrative” termination of Bannon’s case, which would halt the prosecution against him for good but would not clear his name from the docket. The case would officially remain pending while the others, who were not pardoned by Trump before he left office in January, await trial.

Following Bannon’s pardon, which covers only federal charges, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office began its own investigation of the alleged scam, raising the possibility that Bannon could face state fraud charges. If his case remains open in federal court, it is not expected to affect the ability of state prosecutors to file charges.

It is not clear why the U.S. attorney is challenging what was expected to be a straightforward dismissal of Bannon’s case, or whether prosecutors believe the case against the remaining three would suffer strategically at trial should Bannon be officially excluded.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres on Feb. 25, prosecutors argued that “the pardon granted to Bannon is not a basis to dismiss the Indictment against him” and that it does not eliminate the probable cause that led to his indictment, “nor does it undercut the evidence of his involvement therein which the Government expects to elicit as part of its presentation at trial.”

“Were the Court to dismiss the Indictment against Bannon, it could have a broader effect than the pardon itself, among other things potentially relieving Bannon of certain consequences not covered by the pardon,” the letter continued, citing an unrelated case in which a pardoned commodities dealer could not register as a broker.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment further about its request to keep Bannon’s case pending. A response to Bannon’s motion is expected in two weeks. It is not clear when the judge is expected to rule on the matter.

Bannon’s attorney Robert Costello argued in the motion that the U.S. attorney’s office is already treating the case as if Bannon were no longer part of it. Prosecutors reminded Costello of his obligation to return or destroy evidence received in the pretrial document-sharing process known as discovery, and Bannon has stopped receiving new discovery materials that his alleged accomplices are receiving.

Costello said the dismissal is being sought because a pardon “means that Mr. Bannon will never be brought to trial” and because, as a person who has not been convicted, Bannon “is presumed by the Constitution to be an innocent man.”

“The presumption of innocence can only be removed by a conviction which will never happen in this case,” Costello added. “The only purpose of an indictment is to apprise an individual of the charges against him or her, and to bring that defendant to trial based upon those charges.”

In the case of Flynn, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected the Justice Department’s request to dismiss but indicated there was no other option but to do so once Trump stepped in with a clemency order. “Because the law recognizes the President’s political power to pardon, the appropriate course is to dismiss this case as moot,” the judge said at the time, according to an account in Bannon’s motion.

Similarly, a federal court in Florida dismissed a gun case against rapper Lil’ Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Carter. Trump pardoned Carter along with dozens of others on his final day in office. Ken Kurson, a friend of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and another person to receive a pardon — in a stalking case in Brooklyn — saw the matter wiped from the docket without argument.

Bannon was arrested in August and accused of defrauding supporters of “We Build the Wall,” a private effort ostensibly intended to raise money to build an imposing barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border — Trump’s signature campaign promise in 2016. Bannon was accused of pocketing more than $1 million while conveying to contributors that the entirety of the funds collected would support wall construction. He had pleaded not guilty.

The organization’s founder, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, is still expected to stand trial, along with co-defendants Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea. They also have pleaded not guilty.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oooh! "Bannon criminal probe in N.Y. includes embedded investigators from state attorney general’s office"

Quote

NEW YORK — The New York attorney general's office has partnered with Manhattan's district attorney to investigate Stephen K. Bannon for the alleged fundraising scam that prompted his federal pardon in the waning hours of Donald Trump's presidency, according to people familiar with the matter. The move adds prosecutorial firepower to a criminal case widely seen as an attempted end-run around the former president's bid to protect a political ally.

Investigators employed by the state attorney general were deputized to work as prosecutors with the team led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), whose investigation of Bannon began shortly after his pardon was announced in January, these people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

“The AG is working hand-in-hand with the DA’s office in leading this investigation,” one person said. New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) “has been looking at Bannon for a while,” the person added.

James has built a reputation, in part, around her promises to hold Trump and his associates accountable for alleged misdeeds, and she sued his administration several times over policy decisions that affected New Yorkers. It was not immediately clear whether the scope of her interest in Bannon, who helped engineer Trump’s 2016 election victory and later served as White House strategist, goes beyond his alleged role in what federal prosecutors characterized last summer as a lucrative ploy to defraud donors of a private effort to expand the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Vance’s investigation is focused on the same allegations charged in Bannon’s federal indictment, people familiar with the investigation said.

Bannon, along with three others, was indicted in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of stealing funds from their “We Build The Wall” campaign. Federal prosecutors alleged he pocketed more than $1 million after representing to supporters that all funds collected through the effort would be used for wall construction.

Bannon denied any wrongdoing, as did the others. They have not been charged with any crimes by state authorities, but the ongoing federal case does not preclude that from happening.

Bannon’s attorney Robert Costello did not respond to a request for comment. Spokespeople for Vance and for James declined to comment.

Trump’s pardon, a one-page document bearing a Justice Department seal, clears Bannon of “offenses charged” in the border-wall donation drive and “for any other offenses” that could be charged in connection to it.

Presidential pardons do not apply to state investigations.

Such collaboration between the attorney general and the district attorney is rare. The two law enforcement officials are overseeing separate inquiries into Trump and his business dealings, investigations focused on whether the values of certain assets were manipulated to gain tax benefits and favorable loan rates in violation of the state law, but it is not believed the two agencies are coordinating. While Vance is considering whether to bring criminal charges against Trump and his business associates, James is pursuing a civil investigation.

The former president has dismissed both matters as politically motivated.

As state attorney general, James has original jurisdiction over money laundering cases in New York, one person familiar with the collaboration between her office and Vance’s said, while the district attorney can prosecute any criminal offense suspected of occurring in Manhattan. It is possible Bannon could face criminal prosecution and potential civil action, although it is not clear whether such a consideration has been discussed.

Vance, a third-term elected prosecutor, will not seek reelection this year, so it is likely that any case against Bannon — or Trump — would be overseen at the trial stage by his successor.

It is also unclear whether federal prosecutors in Manhattan are assisting state investigators in their Bannon inquiry. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Bannon’s three co-defendants in the federal case did not receive pardons from Trump, and the U.S. attorney’s office in New York is preparing for trial against them. Federal prosecutors are fighting the formal dismissal of Bannon’s indictment, arguing to a federal judge that Trump’s pardon does not mean the case has to be wiped from the docket, only that federal proceedings against him cannot go forward.

 

[Cartmann99]

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

Coale is Greta Van Sustern's husband.

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I would feel sorry for almost anyone who had to share a cell with Bannon. However, if that person was a BT, my sympathy level would go down dramatically.

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I would feel sorry for almost anyone who had to share a cell with Bannon. However, if that person was a BT, my sympathy level would go down dramatically.

 

As to Bannon's smell, I'm imagining him in that scene from Shawshank Redemption where the new 'fish' are hosed down naked with a firehose and desinfectant powder thrown over them, and then marched to their cell carring their clothes. Oh! And speaking of that scene, who else thinks he'd be the first to cry, like that flabby guy in the movie?

[Cartmann99]

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

16 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

Somebody doesn’t know his Bible stories….🙄