What Steve Bannon’s indictment means for Trump’s stonewalling tactics

On Friday, Steve Bannon, a former top adviser to President Donald Trump, was indicted for contempt of Congress, signaling that Trump’s ability to shield himself from potentially damning disclosures related to the January 6 attack on the capital may be waning.

The indictment is the first of its kind in nearly 40 years, and it could be an important sign of things to come as Congress seeks testimony from the 35 people and groups, including Bannon, who have so far received a subpoena.

Bannon, who was subpoenaed along with a number of other former Trump officials in September, left the administration in 2017, but reporting about Bannon’s conversations with Trump in the lead-up to the January 6 attack, as well as remarks made on his podcast, War Room, indicate that his testimony would be of significant interest to the committee.

On January 5, just one day before the attack, Bannon told listeners of his podcast that “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” according to CNN; in December, according to reporting by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their recent book Peril, Bannon told Trump that, “We are going to kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib.”

Despite Friday’s indictment, it’s extremely unclear whether even the prospect of jail time will compel Bannon to testify; as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote on Friday, “the indictment will likely be a point of pride [for Bannon], proof that he’s a true soldier in this world-altering struggle that he’s been hyping on his show.”

Regardless of Bannon’s own inclination to testify, however, it now appears substantially more likely that he will face some consequence for not doing so, unlike previous Trump officials who have flouted subpoenas; if found guilty, according to the DOJ, he will face “a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail, as well as a fine of $100 to $1,000” for each of the two charges of contempt.

Additionally, with the DOJ backing up Congress’s requests for information with real legal muscle, the threat of a subpoena could prove a powerful incentive to testify — and a key tool for Congress in the face of Trump’s efforts to stonewall the investigation.

The Bannon indictment is just one of two developments this week that suggest Trump’s stonewalling tactics could be reaching their limit; the other came earlier in the week, when a DC district court judge ruled the committee should receive documents from the Trump White House related to the attack.

For the time being, a temporary administrative injunction means that the committee will have to wait at least a while longer to receive the documents — arguments before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals are set for November 30 — but experts say the case is moving quickly by the standards of federal courts, a blow to Trump’s efforts to run out the clock.

Specifically, Chutkan’s decision was delivered just 23 days after Trump filed suit, according to the New…