Author: News Polite

WASHINGTON — With his criminal trial for contempt of Congress approaching, Stephen K. Bannon, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump’s who was involved in his plans to overturn the 2020 election, has informed the House committee investigating the Capitol attack that he is now willing to testify, according to two letters obtained by The New York Times.

His decision is a remarkable about-face for Mr. Bannon, who until Saturday had been among the most obstinate and defiant of the committee’s potential witnesses. He had promised to turn the criminal case against him into the “misdemeanor from hell” for the Justice Department.

But with the possibility of two years in jail and large fines looming on the horizon, Mr. Bannon has been authorized to testify by Mr. Trump, his lawyer told the committee late on Saturday in a letter, which was reported earlier by The Guardian.

The former president had previously instructed Mr. Bannon and other associates not to cooperate with the panel, claiming that executive privilege — a president’s power to withhold certain internal executive branch information, especially confidential communications involving him or his top aides — compelled them to stay silent. But in recent days, as several witnesses have come forward to offer the House panel damning testimony about his conduct, Mr. Trump has grown frustrated that one of his fiercest defenders has not yet appeared before the committee, people close to him said.

“Mr. Bannon is willing to, and indeed prefers, to testify at your public hearing,” Robert J. Costello, Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, wrote to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee.

Mr. Costello said that Mr. Bannon’s decision to comply with the committee’s subpoena came after he was cleared to testify by Mr. Trump. He provided the panel with a letter that Mr. Trump sent to Mr. Bannon on Saturday that waived any claim to executive privilege over his testimony or documents relevant to the subpoena.

“Our position about the committee remains unchanged, but President Trump wants Mr. Bannon to tell the committee the truth,” Mr. Costello said on Sunday. He said Mr. Bannon planned to supply the committee with documents as well as testimony.

The committee and the Justice Department have long maintained that Mr. Trump has no valid claim of executive privilege over Mr. Bannon’s testimony, in part because Mr. Bannon left the White House in 2017 and was a private citizen when he was involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold on to power after the 2020 election.

“When you first received the subpoena to testify and provide documents, I invoked executive privilege,” Mr. Trump wrote in his letter to Mr. Bannon on Saturday. “However, I watched how unfairly you and others have been treated, having to spend vast amounts of money on legal fees and all of the trauma you must be going through for the love of your country and out of respect for the office of the president.”

“Therefore,” he continued, “if you reach an agreement on a time and place for your testimony, I will waive executive privilege for you, which allows for you to go in and testify truthfully and fairly, as per the request of the unselect committee of political thugs and hacks.”

Mr. Bannon’s trial on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress is set for July 18. Each count carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.

It remains to be seen how Mr. Bannon’s new posture will affect the criminal proceeding, and how forthcoming he will be. He could refuse to speak about certain topics, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as some other witnesses have done. But the committee has repeatedly said that it needs to hear from Mr. Bannon and receive the documents it requested from him about plans to overturn the 2020 election.

“We got the letter around midnight from his lawyer saying that he would testify, and we have wanted him to testify,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, told CNN on Sunday. “So the committee, of course, has not yet had a chance to discuss it, but I expect that we will be hearing from him. And there are many questions that we have for him.”

Should Mr. Bannon ultimately appear for an interview, he would give his testimony behind closed doors like hundreds of other witnesses have done, Ms. Lofgren said. The committee has carefully choreographed its public hearings to make a streamlined presentation of its case, and has worked to avoid public sparring sessions with witnesses.

For months, Mr. Bannon has been perhaps the most bombastic and strident potential witness the committee has called to testify. He refused to turn over a single document or sit for a minute of testimony. For his intransigence, the House voted in October to hold Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress.

But the panel has insisted that Mr. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist and counselor, could help investigators better understand the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, which was meant to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory.

On his radio show on Jan. 5, 2021, Mr. Bannon promised that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” a statement that shows he “had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day,” the committee said in a report.

Investigators have also pointed to a conversation Mr. Bannon had with Mr. Trump on Dec. 30, 2020, in which he urged him to focus his efforts on Jan. 6, the day that Congress was to make the official count of electoral votes to confirm Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Bannon was also present at a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington the day before the violence, when plans were discussed to try to overturn the results of the election the following day.

Mr. Bannon’s criminal case is just the latest against him.

Federal prosecutors indicted and arrested him in 2020 in Manhattan on charges related to money raised to promote the construction of the border wall long sought by Mr. Trump. But before facing trial, he was pre-emptively pardoned by Mr. Trump hours before the former president left office.

To the Editor:

When I practiced law, I always believed that the Supreme Court, as the highest court in the land, provided a safety net to protect the basic rights of the poor and the downtrodden in our society.

Many of the recent opinions of the court have turned the safety net into a noose, choking the life out of the rights of women, minorities, etc.

The ultraconservative justices on the court make a mockery of the rule of law to serve their political agenda. Shame on them. The American people deserve better.

Shel Seligsohn
Philadelphia

To the Editor:

Picking and choosing among the expressed purposes of the Constitution, the Supreme Court majority consistently dismisses the public welfare and undoes a more perfect union, all in the name of the blessings of (anarchic) liberty.

Douglas McIlroy
Etna, N.H.

To the Editor:

Please don’t call the activist members of Supreme Court conservatives.

Conservatives respect the rules by which government works. They respect precedent. They address issues that come to them, rather than finding excuses for radical change. They don’t dissemble to Congress. They don’t hide their past actions.

They have the integrity not to take something of value (a seat on the court) that they know was stolen. They recuse themselves when appropriate.

These are not conservatives. They are reactionaries.

Chava Casper
Teaneck, N.J.

To the Editor:

That the Supreme Court consists of lawyers is bad enough, but in the last month the court’s conservative majority has flaunted its astounding expertise as historians, linguists, obstetricians and climatologists. With every ruling they assume a new profession.

Chief Justice John Roberts once famously said, “It’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” But is there any arena left in which he and his universally expert colleagues have not inserted themselves as hitter as well as umpire, as player and coach as much as referee?

Aaron Goode
New Haven, Conn.

‘Disturbing’ Views of Young Anti-Abortion Activists

To the Editor:

Re “The Young Women Who Fight Abortion Rights” (front page, July 3):

As a high-risk labor and delivery nurse, I found the views expressed by these young women to be deeply disturbing. Even healthy young people risk morbidity and mortality as a direct result of pregnancy. To force people to carry unwanted pregnancies, even with emotional and financial support, is traumatic; to make them lose their lives and livelihoods because of complications of involuntary childbirth is inhumane.

There is no feminist perspective that includes forcing a person to endure permanent organ damage, disability or death. I have seen women die on operating room tables and in birthing suites. And more will die because of the actions of Kristin Turner, an anti-abortion activist, and people like her.

Meghan Thompson-Wilda
Chicago

To the Editor:

Oh these young women who have the luxury to be anti-choice, even anti-contraception. They didn’t live in the before times. They didn’t battle for the right to control our own bodies. They didn’t escort women through the yelling mob at clinics.

And their optimism that somehow the country will provide resources for women forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term! Wow. Well, I hope they don’t learn the hard way what it’s like to not have control over one’s fertility. But I fear they will.

Anne Brock
Brush Prairie, Wash.

We Need to Ban AR-15s. What Can I Do?

To the Editor:

Re “Living in Fear of a Concealed Gun,” by Patti Davis (Opinion guest essay, July 6):

Thank you, Patti, for your words. I am an American who is sickened by the violence that our nation experiences on a routine basis. We have normalized it, and our political leaders can only send out “thoughts and prayers” to the victim’s families.

What is wrong with us as a people that we can’t ban AR-15s? Writers of the Constitution never had this weapon in mind for self-defense.

I applaud all who have worked tirelessly after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland — the list goes on. I am an ordinary citizen who wants to do more to ban this weapon of mass destruction. I am on your team, Patti! Tell me how I can do more.

Carol Josefowicz
Fennville, Mich.

Losing Australian Slang

To the Editor:

Re “Compiling a Dictionary Is Hard Yakka … Er, Work” (news article, June 20):

The documentation of Australian slang is a “ridgy-didge” (honest) attempt, but it’s probably too late. Some of the rural areas may still use colloquialisms occasionally, but most suburban areas are now too multicultural for their use and they are now heard mainly on Australian soap operas.

What we are now facing is not just the loss of these expressions but also the “Americanization” of our language and accent as a result of our TV viewing, with the main transgression being the pronunciation of Z going from “zed” to “zee.”

Language is becoming more universal and accents are blurring, and if we all communicate more it should be a better world.

Dennis Fitzgerald
Melbourne, Australia
The writer is a retired teacher.