Politics

Bannon: Why Are McConnell And Ryan Letting Democrats Investigate Trump?

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Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
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Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon thinks Republican Congressional leadership is nullifying President Donald Trump’s electoral win by allowing committees to investigate the president.

“The nullification of this election, I don’t think is coming from the left,” Bannon told Charlie Rose in an interview that was released in full Tuesday night.

Parts of the interview aired in a Sunday “60 Minutes” episode, which included Bannon saying that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan don’t want Trump’s “populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented.”

In the full interview released Tuesday, Bannon remarked that, “Not only do you have a special prosecutor and the Justice Department and a couple of grand juries. You have on Capitol Hill … with Republican leadership, you have three separate committees.”

“You have, I think, two in the Senate and one in the House,” Bannon said in reference to the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and the House Intelligence Committee. “And they are investigating him and sending out subpoenas, and they’ve had some big breaks already.”

The House Intelligence Committee has received a cache of documents from the Trump Organization, the Senate Judiciary Committee has questioned Donald Trump Jr, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Principally the Republican leadership has allowed three committees to go and principally be run by Democrats,” Bannon told Rose. “I think [California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff] is running the House committee … looks like [Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner] is running the Senate committee and not [Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr].”

Bannon, now at the helm of Breitbart News, added: “Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton would have won and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi would be the heads of the Senate and the House, that you would have three committees investigating President Hillary Clinton? And you would actually have Republicans running those committees? Of course you wouldn’t.”