Five takeaways on Bannon's indictment | TheHill

Flynn has disavowed his earlier guilty plea and the Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss the charges against him in a sudden reversal.Trump’s former personal attorney Michael CohenMichael Dean CohenThe swamp wasn't drained — it expanded Five takeaways from final Senate Intel Russia report Michael Cohen book accuses Trump of corruption, fraud MORE is serving a three-year prison sentence for a scheme to pay hush money in 2016 to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.While there’s been nothing to suggest that the alleged scheme at the center of the Bannon indictment is connected to the president, the arrest of another one of Trump’s former top advisers casts the White House in an uncomfortable light.The case comes amid building tensions between Trump, NY prosecutorsThe charges against Bannon came just weeks after Trump forced Geoffrey Berman, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, out of his office in a high-profile spat that exposed the tensions between the administration and the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office.When Attorney General William BarrBill BarrEx-FBI lawyer Clinesmith pleads guilty to falsifying document in Trump-Russia probe The Hill's 12:30 Report: Delegates stage state-centric videos for the roll call Watch live: Barr press conference on Operation Legend MORE suddenly announced in June that he would be replaced, Berman initially refused to resign, escalating a brief standoff and raising questions about whether the Department of Justice had clashed with Berman over a politically-sensitive investigation.Berman ultimately agreed to step down when his deputy Audrey Strauss was named as his acting replacement.The indictment on Thursday raises questions about whether the probe into Bannon and We Build The Wall played any role in the June clash over Berman’s job.The complaint filed in federal court hinted that the U.S. attorney’s office may have been investigating the alleged scheme as early as October 2019.The Department of Justice has not responded when asked for comment.Ugly legal day for TrumpThe indictment was announced shortly before a federal judge in New York threw out Trump’s renewed legal challenge to a grand jury subpoena for eight years of his tax returns and other financial records.The Manhattan district attorney’s office is seeking the documents as part of a potentially wide-ranging criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices, citing news articles that detail potentially fraudulent schemes throughout his career before entering the White House.The judge’s decision dismissed the argument from Trump’s lawyers that the subpoena is overly broad and intended to illegally harass the president.