Bye Bye Bannon

Whatever you think of President Trump personally or politically, you must admit that he has a tendency to surround himself with controversial people – who you might refer to as “shady.”

Let me first make it VERY clear, however, that I am NOT speaking of the many people in the Trump administration who are the victims of character assassination by Democrats and their left-wing media allies.  For the most part, Trump’s appointments and hires are great people with strong conservative principles.  They are doing a good job for the nation even as they face the most partisan and vicious attacks from the #NeverTrump Resistance Movement.

I think Education Secretary Betsy De Vos and Attorney General Bill Barr are doing great work – along with most of the others in the Cabinet.  No, I am talking about guys like Roger Stone, Michael Cohen and Steve Bannon.  These types dwell on the darker side of politics and tiptoe along the edge of the ethical border – occasionally slipping over it.

I was never a fan of Bannon – and thought that he took the Breitbart News Network down the rabbit hole after Andrew Breitbart died  in 2012.  I was not pleased when Bannon was given a job in the White House – but happy to see him go after a falling out with Trump.

Bannon has re-entered the news cycle, but not as he would have preferred.  He has been indicted on charges of defrauding donors to the private effort to fund the border wall. That is entirely too massive of a project.  Even extraordinarily successful fundraising could only make be a miniscule contribution to the overall project.

As  private venture, it faced a lot of legal obstacles.  How would the land for the privately funded wall be acquired?  How would it fit with the design and technology of the government-built wall?  While Trump had no knowledge of the details – or any of the misdeeds – he did express his opinion that such a project was not a good idea.  He thought the people involved were well-intentioned, but he never endorsed the idea.

The private project never seemed to be conceptually a good idea – and the idea that 100 percent of the funds raised would go to border wall construction was not only unrealistic, it was downright impossible.  And that seems to be what got those involved in the crosshairs of the federal prosecutors.  It seems that little of the money was spent on actually building a wall and a lot on personal expenditures.

Of course, the indictment is only the opinion of the prosecutors.  The case will have to be adjudicated in a court of law.  From the initial charges and documentation, however, the case does not look good for the defendants – and federal prosecutors have an extremely high conviction rate.

Bannon says it is a “political hit job.”  In these times, it is not prudent to completely rule out that possibility.  But two things can be true.  Federal prosecutors could have singled Bannon out because of his political activities and still found grounds for an unrelated prosecution.  That is exactly what happened to Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen – whose convictions were related to personal financial misdealing.

If you bet on the odds, then you will wager that Bannon will get convicted and sentenced to jail time.  Unlike Stone or Michael Flynn, Bannon is not likely to get a pardon from Trump.  But in these times, anything is possible.

So, there ‘tis.