CNN Legal Panel Mocks ‘Panicking’ Bannon: ‘Hopped Up on Testosterone and Kool-Aid,’ Talked Tough Until Threat of ‘Orange Jumpsuit’

Steve Bannon is having yet another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and a CNN legal panel pulled no punches mocking him for “panicking” over his recent setbacks in court.

The federal judge, Carl Nichols, assigned to Bannon’s case took a “hard line” against the former Trump adviser’s attempted legal defenses in a hearing Monday. CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider reported the ruled in favor of the arguments from Department of Justice prosecutors that Bannon’s “last-minute change of heart” was “irrelevant” in his criminal contempt of Congress case.

Nichols ruled that the government “only needs to prove that Steve Bannon willful and deliberately defied that subpoena back in October of last year,” reported Schneider, and he “cannot bring in extraneous information, he can’t say that he was relying on the advice of counsel when he defied that subpoena, he can’t say he was relying on claims of executive privilege asserted by [former President Donald Trump].”

Essentially, Schneider explained, the only defense remaining for Bannon is to argue that he was mistaken about the date, “that he believed he didn’t have to comply exactly on the date that was specified.”

Later in the hearing, Nichols ruled that Bannon’s trial would proceed as scheduled for the following Monday.

CNN Newsroom anchor Alisyn Camerota then introduced a panel comprised of Palm Beach County (Florida) State Attorney Dave Aronberg, CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem, and CNN senior political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson.

Bannon “now wants to help,” said Camerota, and “suddenly has changed his tune and he wants to help testify. Why is he doing that and does he think it is going to help him in his criminal contempt case?”

“He’s panicking” and “getting scared,” Aronberg replied. “It is interesting how these MAGA warriors who are all hopped up on testosterone and Kool-Aid, they all talk tough until seeing their name emblazoned on an orange jumpsuit.”

Aronberg characterized Bannon’s actions as “an obvious ruse to say ‘I’m going to testify because the former president has finally waived executive privilege.'”

“But that would mean he had the privilege to begin with,” and that was never a privilege he had to waive, Aronberg explained.

“A former president cannot waive it,” and he pointed out that Bannon had no executive privilege and had stopped working for the White House in 2017, “years before January 6th.”

This was just a tactic to “attempt to put some reasonable doubt in at least one juror’s mind,” Aronberg continued, but “I don’t think it’s going anywhere, and I think it shows the desperation of Steve Bannon who sees that he’s quickly running out of excuses.”

Camerota turned to Kayyem, commenting that she thought Bannon wanted a public hearing because “he likes to turn things into a circus, he likes chaos.” She played a video clip from Bannon’s podcast on Jan. 5, 2021 in which he declared “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

“How was he so confident about that?” Camerota asked after the clip ended.

“Because he knew,” Kayyem replied. “This was an insurrection in plain sight if people were only willing to look at it.”

She praised the Jan. 6 committee for their work “unearthing” how the events of that day were “planned, directed, motivated, inspired, everything by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” and called it “amazing” how Bannon had been unable to “keep his mouth shut,” bragging about what he expected to happen.

Tuesday’s committee hearing, Kayyem predicted, would be a “big day,” showing connections between the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and how they began to organize after Trump’s December 19, 2020 tweet that urged his supporters to attend his rally and promised it would be “wild.”

Mediaite will cover Tuesday’s hearing live. Follow all our January 6th hearing coverage here.

Watch the video above, via CNN.