Donald Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, has raised the idea of more violence in the days after the January 6, 2021, uprising in the US Capitol, according to text messages obtained by the House select committee investigating the attack.
The House Committee on January 6 released the latest batch of material on Friday from the investigation into the insurrection and the political players who planned it, including the former president. The committee formally recommended last month that the Justice Department charge Trump with several charges related to the attack, including inciting insurgency.
One of the transcripts of witness testimony released Monday was Alexandra Preate, Bannon’s spokeswoman from 2016 to 2020.
A text exchange between Preate and Bannon on January 8, 2021, obtained by the House election committee, revealed that the former Trump adviser wanted to “turn up the heat” in the days after the deadly uprising. Despite efforts by Trump supporters to stop Congress and Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the Electoral College election for Joe Biden on January 6, the majority of lawmakers did their job that day.
According to the text, Preate then messaged Bannon about Trump still living in Washington and asked when the Republican president planned to leave town before Biden’s inauguration.
“He’s not staying in the White House after the 20th,” Bannon replied, referring to the date of Biden’s inauguration. “But who’s to say we don’t have a million people the next day?”
Preate told the select committee he didn’t know what Bannon was referring to when he mentioned 1 million people, but he thought he was talking about people “marching or standing there or something like that.”
The committee then showed a subsequent text from Bannon to Preate that said, “Yes, I’ll go around the Capitol quietly.”
Preate testified that he doesn’t recall Bannon talking to him much about bringing people back to Washington, even after the unrest in the Capitol.
Preate said there was a time when Trump and Bannon didn’t talk, but the two resumed communication before the 2020 election. He said Bannon was “very private about his conversations, not just with the president but with other people in general.”
He also testified that his work with Bannon did not focus much on the “War Room” podcast, where he and right-wing guests often inflated baseless accusations that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump and incited a rebellion.
A federal jury convicted Bannon in July of contempt of Congress, and he was sentenced in October to four months in prison and fined $6,500. Trump allies refused to submit communications and other documentation to a House committee Jan. 6 and refused to appear before a bipartisan congressional panel for depositions in the investigation.