There are a lot of stories that probably should be organised in a more pieced together way but I’m afraid it’s going to be a dump and run situation
Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
White House-Bannon tried to assert "executive privilege" in refusing to answer Congress' questions about presidential transition.
In April, a federal court squarely rejected idea that executive privilege applies to transition team/president-elect.
Fish v Kobach:
And
Jennifer Jacobs
@JenniferJJacobs
Bannon WON’T be appearing before House Intel committee tomorrow amid impasse over the White House lawyers’ restrictions on what he can say.
But members are expecting him to come back at some point, the top Dem on the committee, Adam Schiff said, per @HouseInSession.
And
Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
“I have contempt for Bannon."
Republican lawmakers fumed at Steve Bannon today, and some threatened to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress, after he stonewalled the House’s Russia investigation, Politico reports.
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/01/17/bannon-house-republicans-russia-probe-345483#click=t.co/3k1CdsMeJY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/01/17/bannon-house-republicans-russia-probe-345483#click=t.co/3k1CdsMeJY
And
Schiff slams Lewandowski: “Yesterday he said on Fox that he would answer every question that we had. Today, however, he refused. To me it’s inconceivable that you would come to an investigative hearing on these issues unprepared to answer questions.”
www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/amp/lewandowski-rebuffs-house-committee-s-questions-russia-probe-n838626?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_np&__twitter_impression=true
And
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
The plot thickens: Lewandowski pulled the same stunt today Bannon pulled yesterday—a false assertion of privilege for post-firing conversations—and House Intel Committee Republicans did nothing. Schiff noted the difference, and clearly found it suspicious.
2/ Couple this with MSNBC reporting indicating that House Republicans' inexplicable subpoena of Bannon in mid-testimony threatened his future usefulness to Mueller—which is why Mueller then subpoenaed him himself, apparently—and it seems some kind of game is going on here.
3/ So the White House and House Republicans treated Corey Lewandowski completely differently from Steve Bannon in an identical situation. What Schiff picked up on is this: Bannon is seen as a possible Trump enemy, while Lewandowski is seen as a Trump ally. So something is up.
4/ But it's also telling that, without (apparently) any direct instruction from the White House Counsel's office, Corey Lewandowski—who's still in touch with Trump and Trumpworld—knew that he was supposed to not answer any questions about post-June 2016 chats with Trump.
5/ The picture emerging here is of a Trump-Nunes nexus which—again—is snaking around behind the scenes trying to deep-six the Russia investigation. It would explain a lot about how strangely the last 48 hours of House Intelligence Committee testimony unfolded, that's for sure.
PS/ One correction: the NYT reports the Bannon subpoena came last week. So that means the GOP brought Bannon in, and tried to subpoena him mid-testimony, to force him to disclose to Trump's agents (notably Nunes) what he planned to tell Bob Mueller. So: mystery solved, then.
And
Manu Raju
Manu Raju
@mkraju
While the WH has avoided technically exerting executive privilege, it has moved to limit scope of witness testimony
amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/01/17/politics/steve-bannon-white-house-limit-testimony/index.html?__twitter_impression=true