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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s political ally Steve Bannon on Monday surrendered to the FBI on charges of criminal contempt of Congress stemming from his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Bannon on Friday was charged with two counts of contempt for failure to comply with a committee subpoena to produce any records and testify about what he knew about the assault.

He was expected to be arraigned on the charges later Monday.

His attorney has claimed in repeated letters to the committee that Bannon’s communications with Trump were privileged.

The indictment sets off what will likely be a contentious legal battle with significant ramifications for the Jan. 6 committee as it seeks to compel other witnesses to testify about the events leading up to the attempted insurrection, including any communications they may have had with Trump.

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland after the department charged Bannon on Friday.

He added the “charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

Executive privilege, according to the Cornell Legal Institute, “is the power of the President and other officials in the executive branch to withhold certain forms of confidential communication from the courts and the legislative branch. When executive privilege is invoked in litigation, the court should weigh its applicability by balancing competing interests.”

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has also been in the committee’s crosshairs after he defied the committee’s subpoena last week to testify about what his version of events were on Jan. 6 — citing similar executive privilege claims.

“Mr. Meadows, Mr. Bannon, and others who go down this path won’t prevail in stopping the Select Committee’s effort getting answers for the American people about January 6th, making legislative recommendations to help protect our democracy, and helping ensure nothing like that day ever happens again,” Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said in a statement.

Meadow’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III said he was “surprised and disappointed” that the Biden Justice Department rejected the former chief of staff’s claims of executive privilege, in a Washington Post op-ed over the weekend.

“Under Supreme Court precedent, President Donald Trump also has a voice to be heard on claims of executive privilege arising from his tenure, and he has instructed Meadows to maintain the privilege. My client thus finds himself caught between two rocks (Congress and the Biden administration) and a hard place (instructions from the president he served.),” Terwilliger wrote.

“Moreover, [Meadows] knows from experience how critical it is for senior aides to be able to communicate freely with the president — and how dangerous a precedent he would set for presidents of both parties were he to appear and answer questions without limitation,” he wrote.

Terwilliger also called negotiations with the committee “fruitless” and suggested the parties “take a deep breath and reconsider ending the tradition of accommodation between the executive and Congress.”

He suggested Meadows deliver written answers to questions.

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(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of his stirring plea at the just-completed Glasgow Climate Conference for “every nation to do its part” to solve the climate crisis, President Joe Biden’s administration is preparing this week to hold an auction for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico over impassioned objections from environmental organizations.

“It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, a lawyer for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “Holding this lease sale will only lead to more harmful oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast.”

The auction, set for Wednesday, will grant oil companies the opportunity to bid on nearly 80 million acres of lucrative federal waters, which would produce an estimated 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years.

The winning bidder will have the right to build platform rigs up to 231 miles from shore and drill for oil at underwater depths of up to 11,000 feet. Environmental groups say the distance from shore and depth of drilling increases the likelihood of a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which caused 4 million barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf.

Brettny Hardy, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit group Earthjustice, said the development of those waters would amount to a “huge climate bomb” that would “compromise our future and move our climate action in the exact wrong direction.”

Biden promised to end new drilling on federal lands during his presidential campaign, and issued an executive order pausing the lease sales during his first week in office, pending a review of their environmental impact.

In June, however, a federal judge ordered the resumption of those lease sales, siding with 13 states that sued the administration for overstepping its authority.

The administration has appealed the judge’s ruling, but agreed to go forward with the leases while the matter works its way through the courts.

A spokesperson for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is tasked with coordinating the auction, said the administration is just adhering to the court’s orders.

“[The administration] is complying with a U.S. District Court’s injunction regarding [the auction] while the government appeals the decision,” said spokesperson John Filostrat. “The Biden Harris Administration is continuing its comprehensive review of the deficiencies associated with its offshore and onshore oil and gas leasing programs.”

The Interior Department said in August that, while it would adhere to the court’s ruling, it will also “continue to exercise the authority and discretion provided under the law to conduct leasing in a manner that takes into account the program’s many deficiencies.”

But environmental advocates argue that the Biden administration has not exhausted its legal “authority and discretion” — and in fact has several options at its disposal to delay or cancel the bidding.

“The administration has more than sufficient authority to choose not to hold the lease sale and to cancel it,” Monsell said.

The Justice Department could file an emergency injunction to pause the lease pending its appeal, according to Hardy, or make the case in court that the environmental effects of the sale could conflict with other federal laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act.

Monsell and Hardy are leading a coalition of environmental groups in suing the administration to prevent the auction from moving forward, with the goal of winning an injunction before the leases come into effect, which the government said would be on Jan. 1.

In a press release announcing their lawsuit, the environmental groups accused the Biden administration of “folding to the oil industry,” which has promoted the auction as “welcome news for the American worker and our national security.”

“As global energy prices rise, continued Gulf of Mexico leasing can help avert inflationary risks and proactively ensure affordable energy for all walks of life, especially low-income communities,” said Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore energy trade group.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House has responded to allegations that the administration is buckling to pressure from the oil industry.

In Glasgow, Biden promised a return of American leadership on climate change issues, pledging to halve greenhouse emissions by 2050.

“We’ll demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table, but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” he said.

Environmental groups said Biden’s words ring hollow as long as these oil leases move forward.

“This isn’t just hypocritical, it’s outright deceitful,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit environmental group. “It truly calls into question whether the Biden administration’s climate agenda is nothing but broken promises.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell did something extraordinary: He decided to disinvite Donald Trump from President Joe Biden’s upcoming inauguration because he was worried Trump could use the occasion to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Karl’s book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, details how after the Capitol attack, McConnell told aides he wanted the top Congressional leaders to draft a letter telling the then-sitting president that he was not welcome to attend the inauguration.

The events eventually prompted Trump to send off what would be his final tweet before being banned by the social media platform, according to Betrayal, set to be released on Nov. 16.

“McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Karl writes in the new book. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.”

But not everyone in Republican leadership was on board with McConnell’s plan.

“Kevin McCarthy opposed the idea, arguing it would be an important message of unity to have Trump attend the ceremony as Biden took the oath of office,” according to the book. “But McConnell was determined to disinvite Trump regardless of whether McCarthy would sign the letter.”

McCarthy, Karl writes, would alert the White House about McConnell’s plan to disinvite Trump. And before the letter could be drafted, “Trump sent out a tweet saying he wouldn’t be attending.”

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20,” Trump wrote on Jan. 8.

“Trump apparently wanted people to think it was his decision alone to become the first outgoing president after an election to fail to attend an inauguration since Andrew Johnson skipped the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869,” Karl writes.

Following an initial suspension following the Capitol attack, Twitter had briefly reinstated Trump’s account on Jan. 7, during which time Trump reverted back to complaining about the election, writing, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

But his tweet about not attending the inauguration would be his last.

Following that tweet, the social media company responded by issuing a “permanent suspension” of Trump’s account, determining that in the context of the Capitol attack, Trump’s tweets violated its glorification of violence policy.

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