Steve Bannon will be grilled by House investigators about Trump-Russia contacts — here's what we can expect

Steve Bannon will sit down with the House Intelligence Committee for a voluntary interview on Tuesday morning.
Bannon is expected to face questions about what he witnessed while he was the CEO of Donald Trump's presidential campaign from August to November 2016, as well as during the transition period and the first six months of the Trump administration, when he was the White House chief strategist.

President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is set to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday morning as part of the panel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 US election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.

Bannon, who until recently ran the far-right media outlet Breitbart News, is expected to face questions about what he witnessed while he was the Trump campaign's CEO from August to November 2016.

He was also one of the president's top advisers during the transition period and in the White House, where he served as the chief strategist and had a seat on the National Security Council.

Rumors have swirled that Bannon, while in the White House, was responsible for some of the most damaging leaks about Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner — including one about Kushner's meeting in December 2016 with the CEO of a sanctioned Russian bank.

By most accounts, Bannon and Kushner have long been bitter enemies, primarily because of their divergent ideological views. Bannon refers to Kushner and his allies as "the Democrats," while Kushner has dubbed Bannon and his nationalist cohort "the crazies," according to Vanity Fair.

Taking the bag of cash from Putin

House Democrats are likely to focus on Bannon's willingness to criticize his former colleagues on the Trump campaign and in the White House — particularly Kushner — for taking meetings with Russian officials.

"He's taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff," Bannon told Vanity Fair late last year. "This tells you everything about Jared."

He added: "They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That's his maturity level."

Bannon has been especially critical of the meeting that Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman, attended in June 2016 with two Russian lobbyists on the promise of obtaining dirt on Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

Bannon was quoted in a new book on the Trump administration by Michael Wolff as calling the meeting "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."

"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor with no lawyers," Bannon said, according to Wolff's new book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House."

"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s---, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately," Bannon added.

He later clarified that he was primarily criticizing Manafort, who he said should have known better than to meet with the Russians at the height of the campaign.

Bannon was also highly critical of Trump's decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey, which Kushner reportedly pushed for while Trump was away from the White House at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey in early May.

Trump Tower meeting

Bannon was appointed the campaign's CEO in August 2016, two months after the Trump Tower meeting. A month later, Bannon received emails from Trump Jr. about messages Trump Jr. had exchanged with WikiLeaks, according to The Atlantic.

WikiLeaks published emails and documents throughout 2016 that US officials have concluded were stolen by Russian hackers. Kushner forwarded the emails about WikiLeaks to the campaign's communications director, Hope Hicks, who is also expected to sit down with House investigators this week.

And Bannon is likely to be asked why the Trump transition team, on which he was a top official, sought to reassure Russia after the Obama administration imposed new sanctions on Russian government officials in December 2016.

"Key will be Russia's response over the next few days," Bannon's colleague KT McFarland wrote in an email he was forwarded that criticized the sanctions decision.

She characterized the sanctions as an attempt by President Barack Obama to "box Trump in diplomatically with Russia" and wrote, perhaps sarcastically, that the transition team should try to reassure the country that had just "thrown" the election to Trump.

Who gave Flynn his orders?

Bannon is likely to be asked who instructed Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, to discuss the sanctions with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the US at the time — and then lie about it to federal investigators — and whether Trump was privy to those discussions.

Committee members may also ask Bannon to shed light on Flynn and Kushner's meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower in early December, and why Kushner met with Sergei Gorkov, the Russian bank CEO, later that month.

Bannon is likely to be asked why the White House made at least two attempts in the months after Trump took office to get the State Department to review the sanctions. The administration looked into easing or lifting them days after Trump's inauguration, according to reports by Yahoo News and NBC, and a senior White House official asked the State Department again in March to assess whether the sanctions were harming US interests.

House investigators will also undoubtedly ask Bannon why he pushed the Trump campaign to hire Cambridge Analytica, a data mining and analysis firm, in June 2016.

It was revealed in October that Cambridge's CEO, Alexander Nix, reached out to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, during the campaign to offer help in finding Clinton's "missing" emails. Lawmakers have asked Nix whether his firm had any contact with foreign government entities, such as Kremlin officials, before the election.

Bannon until recently maintained a close relationship with Robert Mercer, one of the biggest investors in both Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart. Mercer and his daughter Rebekah have been credited with paving the way for Trump's election victory.

Steve Bannon will be grilled by House investigators about Trump-Russia contacts — here's what we can expect

Taking the bag of cash from Putin

Trump Tower meeting

Who gave Flynn his orders?

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