Steve Bannon of Breitbart News speaks on behalf of Judge Roy Moore at Oak Hollow Farm in Fairhope , Alabama, with one week to go in U.S Senate race, Dec. 5, 2017: Photo by Glynn Wilson

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the face of mounting criticism of President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland for not bringing the full weight of the U.S. Department of Justice down hard on Trump loyalists involved in a plot to mount an insurrection Jan. 6 and stop Congress from legally certifying Biden as president, late Friday afternoon the department announced a surprise grand jury indictment of Trump adviser Steve Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Bannon is expected to turn himself in to authorities on Monday, and make his first appearance in Federal District Court in Washington later that day.

According to breaking news coverage from the New York Times, in a rare case, the FBI investigated and the Department of Justice convened a grand jury and found ample evidence to bring Bannon up on charges. The case was referred to the DOJ by the full House, after the Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack voted to find him in contempt.

Related: Select Committee on Capitol Attack Moves to Hold Trump Adviser Steve Bannon in Criminal Contempt

Career prosecutors in the public integrity unit of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington determined that it would be appropriate to charge Bannon with two counts of contempt, and a person familiar with the deliberations said they received the full support of Garland.

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” Garland said in a statement. “Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

Bannon, 67, Trump’s last campaign manager in the 2016 election and briefly an aide to the former president in the White House, who holds a far right nationalistic view of history and whispered strategy and tweets in Trump’s ear even after he left the White House and was fired by Breitbart News, refused to comply with subpoenas for information and documents on orders from the former president, invoking immunity under executive privilege.

If found guilty, he could face from 30 days to a year in jail and a fine of $100 to $1,000 on each count, far too light a sentence for critics of Trump and Bannon, who insist that all those involved in planning the insurrection, including the “Stop the Steal” rally and march to the Capitol, and the breach and plans to halt the peaceful transfer of power by stopping the vote in Congress, should be charged to the full extent of the law.

Many say they should be charged with more than contempt. Everyone involved should and could be brought up on far stiffer charges, including insurrection — an attempt to overthrow the duly elected government – or even treason, which once carried the punishment of death.

Of course no one expects that to actually happen in this case. But millions of people on social media seem to think this is what should happen — if American democracy is going to be saved from a further erosion of voting rights by the political far right, which apparently thinks they have no chance of gaining or holding power without cheating in state after state to suppress voting rights and mislead the public with misinformation and misdirecting people away from facts on social media.

In Washington and national political and legal circles, the politically and legally complex case is seen as a litmus test for whether the Justice Department would take an aggressive stance against one of Trump’s top allies in a matter that legal experts say is not settled law.

The committee said it had reason to believe that Bannon, one of Trump’s closest political advisers and most important strategists, could help investigators better understand the Jan. 6 attack, meant to stop the certification of Biden’s election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in an effort to get the Vice President and state electors to disavow the Electoral College votes and install Trump as the first unelected dictator in American history.

In a report recommending that the House find Bannon in contempt, the committee repeatedly cited comments he made on his radio show on Jan. 5 when he promised “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” as evidence that “he had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”

Investigators also pointed to a conversation Bannon had with Trump on Dec. 30 in which he urged him to focus his efforts on Jan. 6.

Bannon was also was present at a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington the day before the violent attack on the Capitol, when plans were discussed to try to overturn the results of the election the next day.

The grand jury’s decision to indict Bannon raises questions about similar potential criminal exposure for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff and former Congressman from North Carolina, who failed to meet a deadline on Friday morning for complying with the House committee’s request for information.

The committee is considering criminal contempt referrals against two other close Trump allies who have refused to comply with its subpoenas, Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official who participated in Trump’s frenzied plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

On Friday, the leaders of the committee released a blistering statement after Meadows failed to appear to answer questions at a scheduled deposition. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, informed the committee that his client felt “duty bound” to follow Trump’s instructions to defy the committee, citing executive privilege.

“Mr. Meadows’s actions today — choosing to defy the law — will force the select committee to consider pursuing contempt or other proceedings to enforce the subpoena,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, wrote in a statement.

They said Meadows refused to answer even basic questions, such as whether he was using a private cellphone to communicate on Jan. 6, and the location of his text messages from that day.

The committee noted that more than 150 witnesses had cooperated with its investigation, providing the panel with “critical details.”

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, said the charge showed how different the Justice Department could act once its leadership was no longer loyal to Trump.

“It’s great to have a Department of Justice that’s back in business,” Mr. Raskin said. “I hope other friends of Donald Trump get the message that they are no longer above the law in the United States.”

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