As National Zero readers are no doubt aware, Last Friday the Department of Justice indicted infamous dirtbag and Saturday Night Live “Drunk Uncle” cosplayer Steve Bannon. It has since been reported that Bannon plans to surrender himself to authorities on Monday, November 15th. It is the hope of this author, that Justice Department lawyers will seek to have bail denied for Bannon, and that he will be held at the DC Jail along with other January 6th defendants. The two primary reasons for denying bail to a defendant are that the defendant is either a flight risk, or that defendant may engage in behavior that could cause harm to the community at large. Bannon’s case satisfies both of these conditions.

Bannon is an obvious flight-risk because he is a multi-millionaire who has a number of friends and benefactors who own ocean-going vessels and private islands. Bannon has used yachts owned by friends as a hiding place before. If Bannon is granted bail, the process of retrieving him could easily turn into a multi-million dollar effort requiring the assistance of multiple Federal Agencies. Bannon also has friends who own aircraft, and given his status as a public figure, and his alleged ties to Russian Intelligence agencies, may have easy access to forged documents that would allow him to engage in international travel with relative ease, once he had left the United States. Another January 6th rioter recently fled to Belarus, where he was welcomed by the governmetn, and made fantastic claims of “fearing torture” that were broadcast on Belarus television. It is not at all far-fetched to imagine Bannon following a similar path.

There is also the issue of Bannon’s temperament. He is the kind of person who would love to portray himself as the Roadrunner to the Biden Administration’s Wile E. Coyote by skipping the US and doing his podcast from Belarus or Russia. There is no doubt, given his record of behavior, that Bannon would use those broadcasts to encourage his followers in the United States to engage in acts of violence against State and Federal governments. Bannon made public comments on his podcast suggesting that he had prior knowledge of events planned for January 6th, and was deeply involved in planning those events. There is no reason to doubt that Bannon would use his podcast to portray himself as a “leader in exile”, and use that status and that platform to make additional calls for acts of violence against State and Federal governments.

In summaiton: the two primary reasons for denying bail to a defendant are that said defendant is either a flight risk, or that the defendant may engage in behavior that could create additional risk of harm to the public. Given Mr. Bannon’s wealth and his benefactors who have access to ocean-going vessels and private aircraft, along with his history of using one of those ocean-going vessels as a safe-house for hiding out in after a previous warrant was issued, there is no rational argument to be made that Bannon is not a flight risk. Additionally, Bannon’s history of inflammatory rhetoric, and his love of media attention, especially media stories that allow him to portray himself as more crafty and more intelligent than representatives of the Federal Government, means that we should have every expectation that he would try to leave the United States, and portray himself as the wily trickster and leader in exile who then uses his podcast to urge his audience to engage in additional acts of violence against State and Federal governments. Given these factors, we urge the court to deny bail for Stephen Bannon, and to have him transferred to the District of Columbia Central Detention Facility for pretrial holding.