Steve Bannon says in leaked audio Trump planned to declare victory on election night even if losing
Steve Bannon says in leaked audio Trump planned to declare
Steve Bannon says in leaked audio Trump planned to declare
victory on election night even if losing
John Bowden
Thu, July 14, 2022
In shocking new audio obtained by a liberal news outlet former White House chief strategist Steven Bannon is heard outlining a plan for Donald Trump to declare victory on election night before voting was concluded and the results were in.
Mother Jones published audio of Mr Bannon discussing the plan in a conversation that took place prior to election night; according to the former administration official Mr Trump would have declared victory from the Oval Office even before results were conclusive in the various states that determined the winner.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” says Mr Bannon in the audio. “He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.”
And he outlined why he believed the strategy would work: Mail-in voting, long decried by Donald Trump as a way for Democrats to turn out voters, would supposedly take longer to count and therefore give the president an advantage in the early hours of the evening.
Because of mail-in votes, “they’re going to have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy,” Mr Bannon said, suggesting that the president was both aware of and on board with the plan.
Steve Bannon (AP)
The release of the audio comes as Mr Trump is under investigation in at least two settings for his efforts to block Joe Biden from reaching the White House in 2020 and 2021. He faces one public probe being run by the January 6 select committee, which has no prosecutorial power but can supply evidence to the Justice Department and recommend charges be filed. Mr Trump faces another in Georgia, where state officials are investigating his attempts to pressure GOP figures in Georgia’s government to overturn his defeat after election night.
The Justice Department has not said publicly whether Donald Trump is under investigation at the federal level as well, though at least one member of the January 6 committee has publicly expressed doubt and confusion about the DoJ’s apparent lack of action on the matter in multiple interviews.
In his latest interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Wednesday, California Democrat Adam Schiff declared that it was “so unprecedented” for the January 6 committee or any congressional investigation to be “ahead” of the DOJ’s own investigators, as he suggested was the case.
He added in a press gaggle that he “certainly think[s] that the Justice Department has more than enough evidence to begin an investigation involving the former president” regarding Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Mr Bannon has recently signaled that he will reverse course and agree to testify before the committee as he faces trial for contempt of Congress for dodging a congressional subpoena; the Justice Department essentially called that a stunt to avoid punishment in a court filing calling for his trial to go forward.
"The Defendant’s last-minute efforts to testify, almost nine months after his default—he has still made no effort to produce records—are irrelevant to whether he willfully refused to comply in October 2021 with the Select Committee’s subpoena," the Justice Department argued in a filing calling for his latest decision to not factor in at trial.
The Jan 6 committee plans to return next week for its final, prime time public hearing.
John Bowden
Thu, July 14, 2022
In shocking new audio obtained by a liberal news outlet former White House chief strategist Steven Bannon is heard outlining a plan for Donald Trump to declare victory on election night before voting was concluded and the results were in.
Mother Jones published audio of Mr Bannon discussing the plan in a conversation that took place prior to election night; according to the former administration official Mr Trump would have declared victory from the Oval Office even before results were conclusive in the various states that determined the winner.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” says Mr Bannon in the audio. “He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.”
And he outlined why he believed the strategy would work: Mail-in voting, long decried by Donald Trump as a way for Democrats to turn out voters, would supposedly take longer to count and therefore give the president an advantage in the early hours of the evening.
Because of mail-in votes, “they’re going to have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy,” Mr Bannon said, suggesting that the president was both aware of and on board with the plan.
Steve Bannon (AP)
The release of the audio comes as Mr Trump is under investigation in at least two settings for his efforts to block Joe Biden from reaching the White House in 2020 and 2021. He faces one public probe being run by the January 6 select committee, which has no prosecutorial power but can supply evidence to the Justice Department and recommend charges be filed. Mr Trump faces another in Georgia, where state officials are investigating his attempts to pressure GOP figures in Georgia’s government to overturn his defeat after election night.
The Justice Department has not said publicly whether Donald Trump is under investigation at the federal level as well, though at least one member of the January 6 committee has publicly expressed doubt and confusion about the DoJ’s apparent lack of action on the matter in multiple interviews.
In his latest interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Wednesday, California Democrat Adam Schiff declared that it was “so unprecedented” for the January 6 committee or any congressional investigation to be “ahead” of the DOJ’s own investigators, as he suggested was the case.
He added in a press gaggle that he “certainly think[s] that the Justice Department has more than enough evidence to begin an investigation involving the former president” regarding Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Mr Bannon has recently signaled that he will reverse course and agree to testify before the committee as he faces trial for contempt of Congress for dodging a congressional subpoena; the Justice Department essentially called that a stunt to avoid punishment in a court filing calling for his trial to go forward.
"The Defendant’s last-minute efforts to testify, almost nine months after his default—he has still made no effort to produce records—are irrelevant to whether he willfully refused to comply in October 2021 with the Select Committee’s subpoena," the Justice Department argued in a filing calling for his latest decision to not factor in at trial.
The Jan 6 committee plans to return next week for its final, prime time public hearing.
Adam Gabbatt in New York
Thu, July 14, 2022
Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Days before the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump was planning to declare victory on election night, even if there was no evidence he was winning, according to a leaked Steve Bannon conversation recorded before the vote.
In the audio, recorded three days before the election and published by Mother Jones on Wednesday, Bannon told a group of associates Trump already had a scheme in place for the 3 November vote.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon, laughing, told the group, according to the audio.
“He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Related: Trouble for Trump as committee makes case Capitol attack was premeditated
The release of the audio comes as Bannon is due to go on trial Monday for criminal contempt, after he ignored a subpoena last year from the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 last year.
After several attempts to postpone the trial beyond 18 July – including on Wednesday, when Bannon’s attorneys cited some of his past comments during Tuesday’s January 6 committee hearing, and the planned airing of a CNN documentary on Bannon this coming Sunday – a federal judge for a second time denied Bannon’s motion to delay, and ruled Bannon could not make two of his principal defences to a jury.
Bannon had said he was now willing to testify before the House select committee, but the offer was dismissed by the justice department as a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability”, and US district judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, said the trial must go ahead.
Before the 2020 election it had been reported that Trump planned to declare victory early, and in the Mother Jones audio Bannon says Trump planned to “take advantage” of the likelihood that Democratic postal votes would be tallied later than in-person Republican ballots.
Trump did exactly that hours after the election, claiming, “Frankly, we did win this election”, even as millions of ballots were yet to be counted, and after Fox News had – correctly – called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden.
“As it sits here today,” Bannon said later in the audio, describing a scenario in which Trump held an early lead in swing states, “at 10 or 11 o’clock Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out: ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that.’”
Mother Jones said the audio, which is nearly an hour long, was recorded during a meeting between Bannon and supporters of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul whom Bannon helped launch a series of rightwing websites.
In the meeting Bannon said Democratic supporters were more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, meaning their votes would be counted and reported later.
That would lead to a public perception that Trump was winning the election, according to the audio. Democrats would “have a natural disadvantage”, Bannon said.
“And Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”
“So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm,” Bannon said.
“You’re going to have antifa, crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’”
Axios reported before the 2020 election that Trump had “told confidants he’ll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he’s ‘ahead’”, and Bannon said on his podcast on the day of the election that Trump would claim victory “right before the 11 o’clock news”. The Mother Jones audio supports both claims.
Trump, the only US president to have been impeached twice, lost the election: Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. About 81.3 million people voted for Biden, compared with 74.2 million for Trump.
Bannon’s offer to testify to the January committee – a development first reported by the Guardian – was kept up in the air by Judge Nichols, who said he would rule on that motion at trial since it was possible for Bannon to argue he was unclear about the date of his subpoena default.
At trial, the justice department intends to call as witnesses FBI special agent Stephen Hart and the select committee’s deputy staff director, Kristen Amerling, and may also call Sean Tonolli, a select committee attorney, according to the government’s witness list.
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