| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020011)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020011" |
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| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| chairman Devin Nunes in a farcical effort to discredit Comey and support the wiretap |
| theory. The scheme shortly collapsed in universal ridicule. |
| Bannon, taking a public hands-off with respect to both health care and Comey, began |
| to advise reporters that the important story wasn't health care but Russia. This was cryptic |
| advice: it was not clear whether he was trying to distract attention from the coming health |
| care debacle, or couple it with this new dangerous variable, thus amping up the kind of |
| chaos that he usually benefited from. |
| But Bannon was unequivocal about one thing. As the Russia story unfolds, he advised |
| reporters, keep your eye on Kushner. |
| *** |
| By mid-March, Gary Cohn had been drafted into the effort to salvage the faltering health |
| care bill. This might have seemed like a form of hazing for Cohn, whose grasp of |
| legislative matters was even more limited than that of most in the White House. |
| On Friday, March 24, the morning of the theoretical House vote for the Republican |
| health care bill, Politico's Playbook characterized the chances of a vote actually coming to |
| the floor as a "toss-up." In that morning's senior staff meeting, Cohn was asked for an |
| assessment of where things stood and promptly said, "I think it's a toss-up." |
| "Really?" thought Katie Walsh. "That's what you think?" |
| Bannon, joining Walsh in a pitiless contempt for the White House effort, targeted |
| Kushner, Cohn, Priebus, Price, and Ryan in a series of calls to reporters. Kushner and |
| Cohn could, per Bannon, be counted on to run at the first sound of gunfire. (Kushner, in |
| fact, had spent much of the week on a skiing holiday.) Priebus mouthed Ryan talking |
| points and excuses. Price, supposedly the health care guru, was an oafish imposter; he |
| would stand up in meetings and mumble nothing but nonsense. |
| These were the bad guys, setting up the administration to lose the House in 2018, |
| thereby assuring the president's impeachment. This was vintage Bannon analysis: a certain |
| and immediate political apocalypse that sat side by side with the potential for a half |
| century of Bannonism-Trumpism rule. |
| Convinced he knew the direction of success, keenly aware of his own age and finite |
| opportunities, and —if for no clear reason seeing himself as a talented political infighter, |
| Bannon sought to draw the line between believers and sell-outs, being and nothingness. |
| For him to succeed, he needed to isolate the Ryan, Cohn, and Kushner factions. |
| The Bannon faction held tight on forcing a vote on the health care bill even knowing |
| defeat was inevitable. "I want it as a report on Ryan's job as Speaker," said Bannon. That |
| is, a devastating report, an epic fail. |
| The day of the vote, Pence was sent to the Hill to make one last pitch to Meadows's |
| HOUSE |
| _OVERSIGHT_020011 |
| |
