OTOH, Bannon Is Scared Shitless

Bannon will likely assert an “advice of counsel” defense, calling his former attorney to the stand to testify that he advised Bannon not to comply with the subpoena.

For that reason, I’m not surprised that he hired a new attorney. https://t.co/z4XvdENtFr

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) November 15, 2021

He's telling his podcast audience (all 5 of them who aren't reporters) that this is the beginning of "taking down" the Biden "regime." But his defense is, "I didn't know no better, I was misled, I'm just a poor unfortunate who don't know nothin' 'bout law 'n' governmentin'!" Which means too he's seen the handwriting on the wall about Trump's executive privilege defense, and it's not going to protect him or Trump.

And, most importantly, he doesn't want to go to jail.

But has he now come to Jesus and is he ready to cleanse himself of this contempt by answering all the Committee's questions?  Because I can't see that defense leading to a Get Out Of Testifying Free card.

Digby thinks this is all part of Bannon's ingenious master plan to control America:

As I said, from his perspective, being indicted for defying Congress is the best thing that ever happened to him. It's made him relevant again.

I think a stopped watch is right twice a day, but that doesn't make it relevant to anything. Bannon is using up the last five minutes of his fifteen minutes of fame.  I mean the guy looks like a street sleeper.  In his mind he may be Lenin; in reality, he's someone most people have barely heard of and don't give a damn about, and seeing him on the news looking like junkie Santa Claus:

...is quite honestly not going to rally people to his cause, or make them curious to look up his podcast.

Lyndon LaRouche had a more loyal following, and never got as close to power as Bannon did in Trump's first year in office.  And Bannon hasn't been any closer than that since.

Consider:

As authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa recount in their book "Peril":

"Bannon told Trump to focus on January 6. That was the moment for a reckoning.

"'People are going to go 'What the [expletive] is going on here?' Bannon believed. 'We're going to bury Biden on January 6th, [expletive] bury him.'

"If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden's victory on January 6, Bannon said, it would be hard for Biden to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate. They would ignore him. They would dismiss him and wait for Trump to run again.

Well, that explains why the committee wants to talk to him.  I have to say the media is offering a helping hand.  They can't re-use "Democrats in disarray" anymore, but Biden's drop in approval is noted over and over again.  Did you hear every day how Trump's approval never rose above 50% in four years?  Or how Trump never got a major piece of legislation through Congress after Paul Ryan's tax cut?  Biden hasn't finished his first year and already he can't be re-elected (according to conventional wisdom) but Trump accomplished nothing and ran the country into the ground, and he's a shoo-in to win in 2024, because: Virginia. Which has tossed out the governor of the new party in the White House as regular as sunrise.  Yeah, objective journalism, right?  Odd thing is, voters don't really pay attention to pundits, or polls.

Bannon was also a key player in the Willard War Room.

The participants in those meetings—Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, and John Eastman were among the others present—reportedly “discussed plans to stop or delay the January 6th counting of the election results and persuade Members of Congress to block the electoral count.”

And lest any of this was too subtle, Bannon told his podcast listeners on January 5, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick. And all I can say is strap in, the War Room, a posse. You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game day.”

Like I say, the Committee has reasons to talk to Bannon.  Other than the fact he's stone nuts and talks like a supervillain from a bad comic book:

We're taking action and that action is we're taking over school boards, we're taking over the Republican Party through the precinct committee strategy. We're taking over all the elections. Suck on this. Ninety-five percent of the billets in Virginia were occupied of election officials and poll watchers and that is a principal reason that we secured the election of Youngkin. OK?

And they know it, and that's all it is -- getting all these, you know, anti-democratic --no, they're there to have a free and fair count. And we're going to continue that and we're going to get to the bottom of three November and we're going to decertify the electors. OK? And you're going to have a constitutional crisis. But you know what? We're a big and tough country, and we can handle that, we'll be able to handle that.

You and what army of lawyers, Bannon?  The one you now say mislead you about responding to a subpoena? 🤡

"This is not an investigative committee," says Bannon lawyer David Schoen (who was one of Trump's impeachment lawyers), accusing the Jan. 6 select committee for pre-judging in its probe
Bannon: "This is going to be the misdemeanor from hell... They took on the wrong guy."

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 15, 2021

Uh-huh. So you're defense is the one the trial court in D.C. has already rejected from Trump?  The same one the D.C. Circuit is likely to reject in December?

Good luck with that.