Republicans aren’t only sacrificing their dignity to try to keep Donald Trump out of prison—they’re also going to bat for his embattled adviser. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday confirmed that he would back Steve Bannon’s effort to appeal his conviction to the Supreme Court, as the MAGA strategist tries to avoid reporting to jail on July 1 for defying a January 6 committee’s subpoena. “We’ve been investigating the committee itself,” Johnson said on Fox News, baselessly suggesting the bipartisan panel was “wrongfully constituted” and engaged in unnamed “nefarious activities” in investigating 2021’s pro-Trump attack on the Capitol. “We think it violated House rules,” Johnson added. “We’ll be expressing that to the court, and I think it will help Steve Bannon in his appeal.”
The announcement came as Johnson and other House Republicans in a closed-door vote formally decided to “withdraw” the previous Congress’s support for the committee and file an amicus brief on Bannon’s behalf. It’s unclear if the effort will change Bannon’s fate, which could be decided by Chief Justice John Roberts as soon as Wednesday; the amicus brief, as Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported, will not come in by the high court’s deadline. But Bannon cheered the move by Johnson, the speaker he derided just months ago as a “revolting loser” for replenishing foreign aid to Ukraine.
“Speaker Johnson and House leadership showed tremendous courage in repudiating the illegally constituted J6 Committee and its activities/investigations,” the former White House strategist said in a text to Axios.
Of course, there was nothing “illegal” or “nefarious” about the constitution of the January 6 committee or the investigation it undertook. The inquiry, led by Democrat Bennie Thompson and Republican Liz Cheney, gave the public a thorough accounting of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and its violent denouement on January 6, 2021, as lawmakers convened to certify Joe Biden’s victory. Johnson—who helped lead the disgraceful push by congressional Republicans to block that certification—is seeking to rewrite that history, suggesting that the real crime was not committed by those seeking to subvert the democratic process but those who sought to uphold it.
Johnson and the other 146 elected Republicans who participated in Trump’s assault on democracy have an obvious personal interest in smearing the committee that shone a light on their culpability. But there is something particularly pathetic in their doing so for the sake of Bannon, whose delinquency and depravity are perhaps only exceeded by the demagogue he serves. The GOP is asking the Supreme Court to spare Trump from prison time, too, after he was convicted on 34 felony charges last month—and are hoping that the conservative supermajority, which includes three justices the former president appointed, will indulge his outrageous “immunity” claims and further undermine the felony case Jack Smith brought against Trump over his attempts to steal the 2020 election.
Trump’s fortunes are likely to be better than those of Bannon, who will probably have to report to prison next week as planned unless Roberts has a surprise in store. But even if the GOP’s support doesn’t stop his four-month sentence, it could help “flood the zone with shit”—as Bannon himself would say—while the MAGA right seeks to portray accountability as political persecution.
