WaPo Says It’s Breaking News That They’ve Been Duped by Latest Trump-Bannon Lie
The Washington Post treats as BREAKING NEWS that they’ve been duped by the latest Trump-Bannon lie — in this case, that the reason Steve Bannon blew off the January 6 Committee is because Trump invoked Executive Privilege.
Former President Donald Trump is considering [1] sending a letter to Stephen K. Bannon saying that he is waiving his claim of executive privilege, potentially clearing the way for his former chief strategist to testify before the House select committee investigating the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol. [2]
The letter would reiterate [3] that Trump invoked executive privilege in September 2021, when Bannon was first subpoenaed by the House committee. But it would say that the former president is now willing to give up that claim — the validity of which has been disputed [4] — if Bannon can reach an agreement on the terms of an appearance before the panel. The letter was described by three people familiar with it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Some advisers were seeking to talk Trump out of signing the letter. [5]
Let’s start with claim 1 and 5. This BREAKING story is about a letter … that Trump has not signed and may not sign.
Which means it’s not so much a news story as an intervention, presumably by the “some advisers” trying to convince Trump not to sign this.
But even if the letter had been signed, it would be news primarily because it was a lie, not because — as asserted in claim 2 — it “clear[ed] the way for his former chief strategist [sic]” to testify. One way three named journalists (or perhaps two, plus WaPo’s Mar-a-Lago stenographer) might figure out that claim 2 is false is by looking at the subpoena to Bannon, which among other things asked for any references he made to the insurrection on his podcasts, something which (even his attorney Robert Costello conceded) could not be covered by any claim of privilege.
In fact, Costello conceded that seven of seventeen things included in the subpoena could not be covered by any Executive Privilege invocation.
Those same journalists plus Mar-a-Lago stenographer might also refer to the letter that Trump’s attorney, Justin Clark, sent Costello, which among other things acknowledges that the subpoena calls for records and testimony,
including but not limited to information which is potentially protected from disclosure by the executive and other privileges, including among others the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.
That’s a far cry from invoking Executive Privilege over the things that might actually be privileged, and it concedes that not all potentially privileged materials are covered by Executive Privilege and further concedes the subpoena is “not limited” to information that might be privileged. So even if Bannon’s decision to blow off the Committee was entirely guided by that letter, it would be inaccurate to say Trump properly invoked Executive Privilege or that Executive Privilege was the only issue.
That’s pertinent because among other things these bozos wanted to do was claim attorney-client privilege over meetings between non-attorney Mike Flynn and non-attorney Bannon.
The journalists plus Mar-a-Lago stenographer might also check out the two emails that Clark sent Costello, which made it clear that his instructions didn’t go beyond that ambivalent letter, and sure as hell didn’t give him immunity from showing up and answering questions, which is (contra to what the WaPo claims) what distinguishes Bannon from Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, on whose behalf Trump did claim immunity from testifying, valid or not.
And not to be persnickety, but even if claim 2 — that Trump had invoked Executive Privilege — were true, all those communications got sent in October, not September.
Claim 4? That alleged dispute about Trump’s claims of Executive privilege? If anyone is disputing that it’s not valid, they’re defying the ruling of the Supreme Court, which is about as undisputed as one can get.
The entire premise of this story is wrong. But because the WaPo accepted several false premises, it served as cover for an excuse for Bannon to change his mind about testifying before the Committee before his trial starts in less than two weeks.
It is rather interesting that Bannon, possibly in coordination with Trump, is reconsidering his willingness to go to jail to obstruct the Committee. Perhaps, as happened in similar fashion in 2018, Trump wants to script Bannon to give false claims to the Committee, partly in an effort to learn what the Committee knows. Perhaps Bannon would simply show up and do what Mike Flynn and Roger Stone did, plead the Fifth to everything — including, in Flynn’s case, whether he believes in the peaceful transfer of power.
A report on which of those things were going on would make an interesting news story.
But the WaPo isn’t reporting on the game that Trump and Bannon are playing. Instead, they are being gamed.
If a person has been following Ms. Wheeler, they would not have been taken in by this BS ploy.
As I observed the story on TV I anticipated @emptywheel deconstructing the scam.
Thanks for cogent explanation.
I thought that only the sitting president has executive privelege and then only as liimited…
Trump’s authority to “waive” anything at this point is very limited, restricted to such things as his right to an attorney.
See the short paragraph about claim #4. The “dispute” was settled by the Supreme Court.
All crazy right wing bs is handled with kid gloves and treated with respect, but to choose one example out of thousands, AOC is a crazed lefty who never ever talks sense. It feels as though the bottom line rule is that the left must never get away with a clear cut victory while the right must always be at least partially correct.
In the end it’s another empty story made up out of thin air. As soon as Bannon’s lawyer said he didn’t want a circus, it should have been obvious they were lying. Most likely outcome is they walk away screaming that the committee won’t agree to simple fair rules, continuing the myth of an illegitimate partisan committee. There is no way this distraction should be an important story given how much disturbing detail there is to report on and chase down. But I guess we’re stuck pretending Trump and Brannon are reasonable people and Clarence Thomas is a real SC Justice.
Yep.
Remember when Hillary Clinton defended her use of a private computer for her email with the fact that Colin Powell, who she had gone to for advice, had also used a private computer for his communications, rather than the non-classified State Department server?
The media lambasted Hillary for daring to “drag” the good name of Colin Powell into her “scandal”, never mind Powell’s lies to the UN about Iraq’s supposed WMD.
I still hear complaints about Hillary destroying her old hard drives and phones with a hammer as if that’s indicative of a guilty mind. Of course that’s the proscribed way of dealing with material that contains sensitive or potentially classified material.
Ignorance abounds.
Reportering is hard! You have to read things like subpoenas and question things that don’t make sense, like calling what is said on a podcast “privileged.”
OTOH, stenography is easy. And if you can get an editor to toss a BREAKING NEWS header on it, it’s fun, too!
Reporters would also have to remember anything about what these people have done over and over again for decades.
One of the goal of sources is to insinuate themselves in the reporting system so that the memory of everything that they have done is overwritten by the source’s own stories.
It was one of the tactics of Harvey Weinstein and Scott Rudin in entertainment too — if you can only get reporters focused on the last word as told by you, they will lose track of everything that happened before.
There was plenty of history of their abuse on the record, but every time a new abuse came up they knew if they could only get reporters to litigate some relatively minor point right before their eyes, everything relevant in the past would be left out. And they did that by making sure they and their allies could be looped into the source network.
When you express it that way, in terms of no memory of who people are, it reveals the process as ad hominem through and through: actors like Bernie and AOC must always be taken with a grain of salt while obvious crooks like Trump–and the many, many who have come before him–must be treated as worthy of being listened to. In a sane world, both Trump and Bannon would have been dismissed as lying blowhards years ago. But in the world as it is. lies aren’t lies–they’re just understandable jockeying for favorable position in the horse race that defines all culture. And people like Bannon and Trump are so much better at it than people with integrity that of course they earn respect. This dynamic is no small thing. It’s squeezing the life out of democracy.
One of the key dynamics in terms of AOC/Sanders vs. Trump/Bannon is that the political press has long accepted Trump/Bannon/Conway/Barr as a part of their source network in a way that liberals are overwhelmingly shut out.
Reporters have often discredited what they said, but they take their calls and accept their frameworks on how to view issues.
If a GOP operative opines on “populism” a reporter may not confirm every claim backing him up and may even refute some. But they leave unchallenged the ridiculous framework that the GOP backs “regular” Americans and the Democrats are at war with them.
It’s a tradeoff the operatives will happily accept. And in the meantime, liberal ideas are starved of oxygen while the press chases down some minor gossip from Barr or Bannon.
Yeah, liberal ideas like the notion of choosing our own president. And it’s wildly successful to be sure. Here we are all talking about this empty nothing-burger of null and voidness instead of facts as we know them and what is actually happening in the world. Insightful people like Marcy Wheeler expend energy writing a story in response to nonsense. And liberals have been kept in this defensive posture, responding to pure bs, for years now. It works.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Karl Rove
First saw that quote in book titled BUSHE’S BRAIN.
Scared me then. Scares me now.
For all the glitter and streamers fakking through the air towards Liz Cheney, I will not let myself forget- this woman has ben succored her whole life in an enviroment where in Rove’s quote was fufilled daily.
Did they ever stop?
They rigged that election by driving turnout from pulpits across america. They sent pastors sermon sheets. They’re shrewd as hell.
‘Meanwhile Wapo and Haberman are studdying Trump’s Bannon Waiver?
That’s perhaps the most telling quote of the century so far. (Rove claims it wasn’t he who said it.) I think of it often. Sadly for us human people, reality does not care what we think. Climate chaos will not be slowed in the least by mass delusion, nor will the myriad other disasters bearing down on civilization.
Yeah, but that could be an instance of “double discourse,” that is, true in fact but profoundly false in substance. Rove says it wasn’t he who said it (true), meaning, he quoted someone else when he said it – making his statement false. Just a guess on my part, of course. Maybe it was one of those “attributed to Goering” remarks, like “When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my revolver.”
Whoever said it, or even if it was never said aloud, it definitely illuminates a way of thinking among the power brokers and uber wealthy. They equate creating reality with control of the media and control of millions of people through both propaganda and more traditional raw force. It’s hard for most of us humans to understand that what we are thinking is in fact, not reality. We are seeing this delusion with Putin, imho, as he continues to screw up in Afghanistan. If we follow this ideology–that what me make people think is as good as reality–then we see that it enables ignoring every major problem, including the problem of the extinction of the human race. I often think of the inhabitants of Rapa Nut building their enormous totems as they starved. This quote predates Trump, but he exemplifies it in spades. Hence the denial that he lost the election.
“They equate creating reality with control of the media and control of millions of people through both propaganda–”
Exactly! Just as with Trump, appearance IS reality: the world’s .1% think if they can con the other 99.9% into believing in their “FAKEreality”, then it will actually BE reality. More evidence that the vastly wealthy are actually pretty dumb.
Climate change and pollution of the oceans doesn’t listen to FOXnews, or other corporate media propaganda. Meanwhile, Wildfires and droughts all across the globe are creating reality, for all of us.
I actually heard Karl Rove say that quote on NPR’s Morning Edition, during the election. I do not remember who was interviewing him, probably Steve Innskeep. Of course, there was no push-back or questioning if that was right or wrong.
[FYI – I’m releasing this from auto-mod, but I need to warn you that your identity looks like sockpuppeting to this site. If you’ve commented here before, please revert to your previous username or let us know you’re sticking with this ID. /~Rayne]
Maybe start referring to them as: plagiarists, not stenographers. (seriously)
From Cambridge dictionary online:
type-sucking scum
word bandits
phrase pirates
rewrite leeches
p.r. vultures
elasti-facts
fact falcation
asstercasters
sorry…..
but really, Bannon will be digging up obscure Anglo-Saxon or legal Norman writs next.
Up here in Canada, the frontrunner for leadership of the federal Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, has released a video in which he calls upon Canadians to “reclaim your freedom” the same way that “the commoners forced King John to sign the Great Charter [i.e., Magna Carta]” 800 years ago. Of course, it was not the commoners who forced King John to sign Magna Carta, it was his barons who were only looking out for their own interests, but Poilievre is trying to cast Justin Trudeau in the role of the evil King John without stating specifically what “freedom” we “commoners” are lacking at the moment.
Yep. They’ll lie about everything…if they even bother to know it’s a lie. This is what anti-intellectualism looks like. I’m sure that Canada isn’t immune to it.
What is this “podcast” thing?
Assuming you’re not snarking, see the reference to Bannon’s podcast in Marcy’s post:
Some elements of this even the laziest reporter should be able to pick up. As part of his “stop the steal” nonsense, Mr. Trump cosplays POTUS, always talking as if he is the “legitimate” president. So to him — and to no person who reads, much less writes for, a real newspaper — he has the authority to waive executive privilege for Mr. Bannon. Acts that are part of this cosplay are easy to spot, they always sound funny, like this one.
It’s not like you need to read emptywheel to cover these matters, reporters. (Still recommended though.)
Yes. Assuming Trump is behind this, there is a distinct whiff of (false) preening here.
2 WaPo Reporters + 1 MaraLago Stenographer:
It would be fun to list sets of three people who might have been so sensitive to the matter.
I got a boil on my ass far more sensitivity than this “matter”. I’ll say it once again, they’re tripping.
1. “Former President Donald Trump is considering…” That’s a rare event.
2. “Some advisers were seeking…” is just another version of “People say…”
#1! When I saw that headline I said Whaaaaaat??? Trump considering something? WTF is that supposed to mean? I thought maybe the Rapture had ruptured and the Holier-than-thous were offering DJT a limo to heaven to sit at the right hand of the other big guy.
Every newsroom across the country should have a big sign posted reading, “DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR AND A CONMAN” for reporters to refer to every time they’re considering writing a story about the ex-President. The default response to anything Trump says should be stark and utter disbelief.
There’s a certain deathbed conversion air about Bannon’s sudden willingness to appear before the J6 Committee. I think of that old Latin saying, “Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus” and I wonder if Bannon wants to use the chance to testify before the Committee as a way to use that old saying in reverse–“Verum in uno, verum in omnibus”. That is, if Bannon gets a chance to testify, he’ll make a few statements or admissions that are true–which the media will duly report to demonstrate their fairmindedness–in hopes that the viewers/listeners at home will assume everything else he’s saying, no matter how putrescent a lie, must be true as well.
But why would the press be so invested in a narrative constantly demonstrated -by them – to be highly flawed. There’s so much to be gained, and so many permanent plaudits to be earned by successfully bucking the system (see: Woodward/Bernstein, Ronan Farrow), why do so many not do so. And worse, is it possible that they think they do?
Because they can put the name Trump in the headline; a grifter trying to destroy America’s electoral process gets free publicity; WaPo gets readers and clicks. A win-win if you put profit above patriot duty.
Money is a very bad predictor for this stuff.
GOP source friendly articles on substantive issues are almost always not clickbait and frequently crowd out much more engagement friendly reporting.
They are typically convoluted, obscure, and involve almost impenetrable writing. The basic who/what/why format of gripping reporting becomes completely diluted when these hacks get their fingers on stories.
What happens much more often is reporters and editors are involved in ideological capture. They cede the framing and analysis to a narrow set of sources, and in an environment with little serious competition or debate, there is little reward for doing better.
Pulitzers for political reporting and commentary are overwhelmingly determined by log rolling and horse trading among the NY Times, Washington Post, WSJ and a couple of other players — a sign of how broken the prizes are is how the NY Times won a Pulitzer for its reporting on Russia and the 2016 election. It’s a closed system.
Judith Miller won a Pulitzer.
Not every reporter is like Dawsey, but the institutional winds blow hard against anyone in DC who challenges the pack.
Good points. It’s still a puzzlement. Perhaps there really aren’t that many free-thinking people in the world who can intellectually transcend their environment. Perhaps good reporters get ground down by a system that penalizes clear reporting. Perhaps it’s just as simple as the owners or those who have the owners’ ears are able to editorially control what gets published. I don’t know how many times I have heard reporters I respect respond to this issue with extreme defensiveness and gut level belief that there is nothing wrong with reporting and that they’re all doing a great job. At best they will allow that what people demand to read limits what they can write. My impression is that the profession is essentially blind to the things we are talking about here.
My belief is that underlying it all is unconscious fear. I think we humans often make unconscious decisions based on unconscious fear. I’m talking, for example, of how people behave around a very large and strong person–there is more deference to that person but few are aware that there is a level of fear. I think there is society-wide fear of bucking the powerful, who are perceived as Republican, military, buttoned-up corporate men. An example of this was the strong “Be careful not to annoy Putin” element early in the Ukraine invasion. I think it’s the source of Trump’s power–people being afraid of his temper. Society-wide it is safe to sneer at the left any which way except overtly racist, but critiquing the right requires treading carefully lest there be blowback. This is by design and it works. Propaganda works. Fear tactics work. It probably sounds far-fetched or nebulous, but in a very definite way I believe the underlying motivating factor is unconscious fear of running afoul of the powerful.
“Perhaps it’s just as simple as the owners–”
as the owners not hiring intelligent, capable reporters, but just hiring semi-literate gossipers and stenographers.
Oh, where are the Lippmans of yesteryear?
At this point, I’d settle for a couple of Drew Pearsons.
replying to DME:
yes, this is how fascism works, exactly.
Have you actually ever written and/or submitted reporting and/or commentary to the Pulitzer or other contests for journalism?
Because you’re full of shit and I actually have submitted work as a managing editor on behalf of team members. And I wouldn’t have been in a position to do that without Marcy.
Miller didn’t win the Pulitzer — an NYT team did, which happened to include Miller. They won the 2002 prize for Explanatory Reporting related to their 2001 work about 9/11 (Per Pulitzer: “For its informed and detailed reporting, before and after the September 11th attacks on America, that profiled the global terrorism network and the threats it posed.“). This work may have laid the ground to her bullshit aluminum tubes reporting later in 2002, but she didn’t win the prize for her 2002 reporting.
Same for Dawsey — the Pulitzer the WaPo won was for Public Service reporting, awarded to a WaPo team for 15 stories. Scroll down to the bottom of the page here at Pulitzer and note who were the judges; not a single one of them is NYT, WaPo, WSJ, or whatever other big media outlet you think is horse trading and log rolling.
Failing to focus carefully on the specific failings of specific journalists smears others who work on the same team at the same outlet. In the case of WaPo, the folks who won the 2022 Pulitzer for Public Service reporting included Carol Leonnig, David Fahrentold, Paul Kane, many other names we rely on frequently; scroll down to the bottom of this WaPo interactive piece which was the culmination of all the January 6 reporting WaPo submitted for the Pulitzer and note all of the contributors you’re bashing, some of whom risked their lives on January 6.
Now back the fuck up and take better aim: who exactly failed the public interest and specifically how did they do that.
Well, I guess it’s complicated, and there is excellent reporting, but the overall feeling I get is that because what is stressed and how things are worded, the top papers you mention obscure the big picture more than they enlighten. If you’re well-informed and know what you’re looking for, and have a good internal bs meter for ignoring the froth, then sure you can learn a lot.
In support of your point, however, one of the more disturbing thing in recent memory, and that is saying an awful lot, is when the WaPo spent months and significant reporter time on an in-depth look at the insane out-of-control grown of a sprawling intelligence, anti-terrorism bureaucracy. Ineffective, uncoordinated, wildly wasteful, likely actually undermining of national security. They braced themselves for the shitstorm that would surely ensue when their hard-hitting story hit the newsstands. No one noticed. Hardly a blip on the radar screen. No one cared.
My, you haven’t been paying attention since the post-Watergate crisis in “too much democracy.”
If “putrescent” weren’t already a word, someone would have to invent it.
Shirley you’re not referring to the boil (thanks Vinnie) on the top of Bannon’s neck?
I first came across the word when I was a kid and read a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Among the tales was “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”. in which the gentleman in question is hypnotized just at the moment of death. Months later, the hypnotist awakens M. Valdemar (who has been in bed all this time), only to witness him instantly rot away into “a loathsome mass of liquid putrescence.” At least, that’s the phrase that’s stuck in my mind all these years; but upon checking just now I see that what Poe actually wrote was “… a nearly liquid mass of loathsome–of detestable putridity.”
If Kellyanne Conway can have her “alternative facts”, maybe Steve Bannon can be be allowed his “putrefacts”.
If were making words then how about persphinctery?
Might account for Vinnie’s boil as well as where Bannon puts his head.
Vinnie – you should get that looked at – if it starts demanding voting rights and starts singing ‘twinkle twinkle trumpy star’ you might make millions…
Putrescence, you say?
Boo! Boo! Bow down . . .”
That’s exactly where my head went . . .
Barton Gellman, a staff writer at The Atlantic, asks: What Happened to Michael Flynn?
“Demented” answers McCaffrey. Kelly says “money”. “I personally think he should become Trump’s running mate,” Clark said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/michael-flynn-conspiracy-theories-january-6-trump/661439/
“…strategist (dic)…”
Whether something is newsworthy is a matter of opinion, however weak the argument for this article.
However getting basic facts wrong is a travesty, I hope you submitted a correction. To quote from their policies and standards page “No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance. Fairness includes completeness.” ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/policies-and-standards/ )
“Forget it, Sam, it’s WaPo.”
Jake.
And I’m one of those select few who actually liked the sequel (The Two Jakes).
Trump is a seditious warlord but that term is only used to describe black men in places like Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda. “Twice impeached ex-president” suggests that the process is working. But it didn’t work. Trump’s army continues to pull off the crime of the century in broad daylight. These guys always project. When they claim that the 2020 election was stolen, what they mean is: The 2024 election will be stolen.
Just looked at Google News “all coverage” linked to the WaPo story. Dozens of outlets followed the WaPo, mostly echoing it and quoting “reports”.
Only CNN seems to have bothered to call the prosecutors who note “he was never shielded”.
Mother Jones speculates as to Trump’s motives, having swallowed hook, line, and sinker of the WaPo story.
I know I am preaching to the converted here but everyone pls read emptywheel.net
The story didn’t even point out that on January 6, Bannon hadn’t worked there for several years.
Many of the comments objected to running this story. Some suggested that it was a back door attempt to get the committee to accept that the privilege exists
But it’s unbelievable that the reporter didn’t point out the privilege is imaginary (and a couple of the comments said the paper shouldn’t let anyone write about executive priviilege who either didn’t know or didn’t care that it’s a mirage.)
It was a typical effort barfed out by courtier press reporters seeking to gain ‘access’. After all, the GQP is usually good for sound bites (Frank Luntz tests them first) and that’s what gets the attention. Combine that with Chuckles Todd going back to his id and opining that ‘America’ won’t stand to see Individual-1 prosecuted. It’s completely lazy Beltway CW and ignores the effect already seen from J6SC revelations, the whispers about GQP contributors over TFG’s political viability and other actual reporting. It’s also been seen by other GQP pols like DeSantis and (allegedly) Youngkin testing to see if they can peel off the MAGA vote. That’s off the top of my head, so wonkish types like Chuckles pretends to be have no excuse for missing the evidence in front of them.
As noted by Grennan, Bannon has as much privilege around J6 as Flynn does (I did see the Army docked his pension for the Moscow RT dinner) but this is really a fishing expedition to see what the committee knows so the cabal can get their stories back in alignment.
I heard Chicago local news (ABC, NBC) twice, and also ABC national news on Sunday eve spoke of tfg waiving the privilege and so Bannon can/will now testify. s/m/h
This is such complete bullshit it is almost beyond belief.
How do they even do that?
By repeating whatever is splattered across their teleprompter.