- Steve Bannon was convicted on Friday of two counts of contempt of Congress.
- He accused the Jan. 6 committee of spewing lies and said Republicans needed their own committee.
- “I would say to the January 6 staff right now, keep your documents because there’s going to be a real committee,” he said.
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Steve Bannon attacked the House committee on January 6 hours after he was found guilty of contempt of Congress on Friday.
Speaking to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Bannon warned committee staffers that Republicans would have their own committee if they were returned to power.
“We need to have a real January 6th committee, including to get to the staff now and see the lies and misrepresentations that they’re making on national television to smear people,” Bannon said.
“I would say to the Jan. 6 staff right now, keep your papers because there’s going to be a real committee, and that’s going to have the support of the Republican base voters to say we want to get to the bottom of this for the sake of the nation.” .
The Trump ally said Republicans must take offensive action if they are to take back the House in the midterm elections.
“We need to really govern, and I mean govern on offense. Every committee in the House needs to be an oversight committee. We need to go after the Biden administration, which is illegitimate,” Bannon said.
Audio of a former Trump security official’s testimony is played during a Jan. 6 House committee hearing. Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images
He also praised right-wing activist Darren Beattie, who has promoted the baseless conspiracy theory that the FBI was involved in the attack on the Capitol.
Bannon said a Jan. 6 Republican committee will look at “the intelligence failures, the FBI’s involvement, the DHS’s involvement, the intelligence services, what happened to the Pentagon and the Guard National”.
Trump allies have made baseless claims that the former president’s requests for National Guard troops before the attack on the Capitol were denied by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which has been widely denied.
Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist in the White House, was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress on Friday for defying a Jan. 6 House committee subpoena and failing to provide requested documents.
During his trial, he refused to testify in his own defense or call any witnesses to the stand. He at one point accused members of the House committee of not having “the guts” to testify against him.
Each contempt of Congress charge carries a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in prison.
Speaking on Fox News, Bannon said he had a “long appeals process ahead of him,” but said he wasn’t worried about going to jail.
On Friday, January 6, commission members hailed the ruling as a “victory for the rule of law.”