Pam Bondi’s DOJ Tries to Help Steve Bannon Erase His Jan. 6 Conviction

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is trying to help former Trump adviser Steve Bannon erase his conviction for defying a congressional subpoena.

The DOJ filed a motion in federal court Monday to throw out Bannon’s 2021 indictment for contempt of Congress after he refused to appear before the House’s January 6 committee to answer for his involvement in the Capitol insurrection. Bannon had initially tried to fight the indictment by claiming executive privilege through his work for Trump, but he would ultimately serve four months in federal prison.

Bannon was trying to appeal through the courts to get his indictment dismissed, even petitioning the Supreme Court. The DOJ had postponed responding to Bannon’s petition, but now seems to be trying to avoid the high court’s involvement. The motion was made by District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro herself, with no career prosecutors or lower-level attorneys apparently assigned to Bannon.

If the dismissal is granted, it would be yet another way Trump has attempted to whitewash the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. He successfully stalled the federal election interference case against him until he was reelected president in November 2024, when it was dismissed. Trump then pardoned everyone charged in the riots, even those who committed violent acts.

Bannon served his sentence while Joe Biden was president, but Trump can now reward his old friend, who was also proven to have had a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in the government’s latest release of files related to the convicted sex offender.

An elections expert warned Vox Monday that the “nightmare scenario” for the upcoming midterms is one step closer to being realized in the wake of Donald Trump’s raid on a Georgia election office.

The recent raid at the Fulton County election office demonstrated that the Trump administration is capable of gaining judicial support for its efforts to confiscate ballots. The FBI was able to obtain a search warrant even though the allegations on which the investigation hinges have been repeatedly disproven in court. 

If the Trump administration is able to seize ballots, then come November, the government could confiscate ballots from precincts where mail-in ballots are determining close races before the results are actually tallied—and bring American democracy crashing down.   

Derek Clinger, senior counsel at Wisconsin University Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, warned Vox that the raid was a test run for legitimizing this tactic.

“The nightmare scenario used to be that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act and have the military seize ballots and machines from a swing state on election night,” Clinger told Vox. “But Fulton County suggests a much more plausible scenario: one where the seizure of ballots is conducted with the appearance of a legal process. I think that approach is both more likely to happen and also harder to challenge in real time.”

Trump already laid the groundwork for seizing ballots last spring by issuing an executive order asserting that states cannot count mail-in ballots after Election Day and that the government needed to decertify and recertify all voting machines. While these two elements of that order were challenged in courts, and many states still allow votes postmarked before Election Day to be counted, the Trump administration has created a rationale for discounting the results of state elections because, by the White House’s standard, many would be illegal.

Another possibility that feels more real than ever is the likelihood that Trump will use federal immigration forces to chill voter turnout by deploying the president’s extrajudicial hit squads in specific cities.

Justin Levitt, a former DOJ official and professor at Loyola Law School, told Vox: “I think it is, tragically, an unfortunate possibility that ICE paramilitary forces will be misused in an attempt to deter people from participating in elections.”

President Trump and his supporters have been attacking American Olympians for expressing even the slightest criticism of the Trump administration while competing at the Winter Olympics in Milan.

“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now I think,” freestyle skier Hunter Hess said at a Friday press conference. “It’s a little hard; there’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. I think for me it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home … all the things I believe are good about the U.S.

“If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it,” Hess continued. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

His teammate Chris Lillis was even more specific.

“I feel heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States. I’m pretty sure you’re referencing ICE and some of the protests,” Lillis said. “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect.… I hope that when people look at athletes [competing] in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.”

These comments were very triggering for the MAGAverse.

“U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening. “Very hard to root for someone like this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

“Wow pls shut the fuck up. From all true Americans,” boxer and right-wing content creator Jake Paul said. “If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else.”

“Chris Lillis and Hunter Hess have now had their 15 minutes of grandstanding fame,” a smaller account wrote. “It is now my wish that they do horribly in their events and disappear.”

Figure skater Amber Glenn also received MAGA backlash for saying that the LGBTQ community had had a “hard time” under the Trump administration—even after winning a gold medal.

“I hope I can use my platform and my voice throughout these games to try to encourage people to stay strong.… I know that a lot of people say you’re just an athlete, stick to your job, shut up about politics. But politics affect us all. It is something that I will not just be quiet about.”

“The little woke skater didn’t perform her best. Guess she should have focused on practicing and not being a wokie,” one right-wing account wrote incorrectly. “Karma got her.”

Then there was Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who quoted former South African President Nelson Mandela at a press conference: “Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where we can all flourish, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference.”

“Criticize policies at home. Debate. Vote. Protest if you want,” one detractor commented. “But if you step onto the Olympic stage under the American flag, show some basic respect for the country that gave you that opportunity.”

None of these people would have any issue if Olympians were getting onstage and fawning over Trump. But they’re doing the opposite, and now MAGA is trying to pretend that the most political sporting event in history should somehow be devoid of politics.

Members of Congress are calling on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign after the government’s latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files show that the pair had a close relationship, contradicting Lutnick’s earlier denials.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York, claimed last year on the conservative Pod Force One podcast that after he met the convicted sex offender in 2005, he swore off future interactions with Epstein. But revelations late last month show that Lutnick’s financial services firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was making deals with Epstein long after that, with Lutnick traveling to Epstein’s private Caribbean island and continuing to correspond with the billionaire via email.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie and several Democrats over the weekend called for Lutnick to step down, with the Kentucky congressmen telling CNN’s Inside Politics on Sunday that Lutnick “should just resign.”

“Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island, if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove posted Sunday afternoon, “In between gaslighting Americans about the economy & sucking up to Trump, Lutnick took up TV air time to lie about his relationship with Epstein. He visited Epstein’s island in 2012 yet claimed he cut ties with Epstein years earlier. What else is he hiding? He must resign.”

Representative Robert Garcia later said, “It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein. He said he had no interactions with Epstein after 2005, yet we now know they were in business together. Lutnick must resign or be fired. And he must answer our questions.”

Representative Ted Lieu called out Lutnick for having gone “on national TV and lied to the American people.”

“You were despicable then for planning a visit to Epstein island, and you are despicable now for brazenly lying. You should resign,” Lieu posted Sunday.

“He has no business being our Commerce Secretary. He should resign,” Senator Adam Schiff also posted Sunday, calling out Lutnick for lying about his business ties with Epstein.

On Monday, Representative Melanie Stansbury called for Lutnick to appear before the House Oversight Committee and said, “I personally believe that Mr. Lutnick needs to step down immediately.”

The U.S. health secretary’s motivation for ending childhood obesity apparently rests on military recruitment.

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event Monday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that America’s fat kids need to lose weight so they can go to war, lest we “lose” the country.

“Seventy-seven percent of our children can no longer qualify for military service and most of that is diet-related,” Kennedy said. “We need to change what we’re feeding these children or we’re going to lose our country.”

The Pentagon’s 2020 Qualified Military Available Study found that just 77 percent of young Americans would qualify for service without a medical waiver due to reasons such as obesity, drug use, and mental or physical health disorders. The report noted, however, that just 11 percent of America’s youth would be disqualified from service for obesity. Kennedy appears to have his numbers backward.

But the U.S. does have a severe obesity problem. Federal administrations dating back to the 1970s have attempted to address it, though seemingly to no avail, as rates are higher than ever. Roughly two in five Americans are obese, according to data from the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, one in five children are affected by obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For all the political noise Republicans made when former first lady Michelle Obama decided to tackle childhood obesity rates, Kennedy’s efforts are totally cool with conservatives—even, or perhaps especially, if his end goal is to use children’s bodies for America’s militaristic aims.

Back in September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that his version of the U.S. military would have no room for “fat troops.” Speaking before hundreds of America’s top military commanders at a mandatory in-person meeting in Quantico, Hegseth unveiled his efforts to de-wokify the country’s armed forces, including resetting military combat requirements to the “highest male standard only” and updating the branches’ height and weight requirements. He not-so-subtly admitted he wanted to force women out of service, as well as Black men by way of a ban on military beard waivers.

But it’s not clear if Kennedy’s MAHA agenda—which was generated by AI—will work. Last month, the health secretary unveiled the outcome of his department’s monthslong project to reimagine the food pyramid. The result: an upside-down triangle, in which butter, steak, and cheese play a leading role.

Furthermore, a fraction of Americans volunteer for military service, raising questions about whether obesity rates actually have an effect on recruitment efforts. Less than one half of one percent of the general public is active duty, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Only roughly 6 percent of the population has ever served in the military, representing some 18 million veterans.