Former Trump-whisperer Steve Bannon will reportedly endure a special counsel grilling by the end of January.
The onetime White House chief strategist will face questions about the firings of former national security adviser Mike Flynn and FBI director James Comey, CNN reported Wednesday.
And unlike with last week’s marathon interview with congressional investigators, Bannon likely won’t be able to lean on executive privilege to evade special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of forensic bloodhounds.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declined to say on Wednesday whether President Donald Trump will invoke executive privilege to limit what Bannon can say.
Bannon angered both Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee by dodging inquiries about his time working in the West Wing and for Trump’s chaotic presidential transition.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon will endure a special counsel grilling in the next week
Robert Mueller’s team of forensic bloodhounds are probing whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to impact the result of the 2016 presidential election
He could also face questions from Mueller about the Trump campaign’s alleged but unproven links with Russia.
Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into claims that Trump’s campaign team colluded with Moscow has led him to burrow deep inside the White House’s law enforcement and intelligence leadership.
Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI, in a move that was seen as a signal of cooperation with the Justice Department.
Other top-echelon leaders who are, in some form, participating in the investigation include Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, former FBI director James Comey, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, NSA chief Mike Rogers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former acting attorney general Sally Yates.
It was Yates who first told White House lawyers that Flynn had answered the FBI’s questions a year ago about his discussions with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn didn’t bring a lawyer to that session and hid it from Trump and his other senior aides.
Bannon was a Trump-whisperer for a year, beginning with his tenure as CEO of the Trump campaign and ending with his ouster from the White House
Trump fired Comey after allegedly asking him for a pledge of loyalty and hinting that he should drop his investigation of Flynn – claims that Trump has strongly denied.
Pompeo was reportedly asked by Trump to lean on Comey.
Bannon wasn’t directly involved with the decision to fire Trump’s first FBI director, which the president said afterward he had decided to do early on in his administration.
But Bannon has publicly labeled Comey’s dismissal as an unforced error, agreeing during a CBS News exit interview that it was ‘the biggest mistake in modern political history.’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that if James Comey had not been fired, we would not have a special counsel,’ he said at the time.
Michael Wolff’s controversial book could give Mueller’s investigators a road map for picking what to ask Bannon
Bannon also dismissed the premise of Mueller’s ever-expanding probe, allegations that Russia helped Trump tilt the 2016 election to his advantage, ‘a total and complete farce.’
Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with the Kremlin, and called it a Democratic Party-inspired ‘witch hunt.’
CNN reported that ‘Fire and Fury,’ a best-selling White House tell-all that Bannon helped facilitate, could become a road map when Mueller’s prosecutors quiz him.
In the book, Bannon is quoted saying the special counsel probe ‘is all about money laundering.’
‘Their path to f***ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner,’ he claimed, foretelling Manafort’s indictment and the expectation that the other two men will soon take a turn on Mueller’s hot seat.