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- Stephanie Grisham says that Steve Bannon will use his indictment for contempt "as a badge of honor."
- During an appearance on CNN, the former Trump aide said she is "very glad that this is happening."
- Grisham also warned that Trump would try to "stall" the January 6 investigation.
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Saturday said that Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist under former President Donald Trump, will "absolutely" tout his recent indictment for contempt of Congress "as a badge of honor."
The US Department of Justice last week announced that a federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress by failing to appear before a deposition last month and for rejecting requests to turn over documents.
During an appearance on CNN, Grisham, who was former first lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and press secretary at the time of her resignation on January 6, told host Jim Acosta that the former president would continue instructing aides to "stall" in cooperating with the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol.
"I'm very glad that this is happening, and I do hope that it will have, you know, many others who are getting subpoenaed … take a step back and realize there's some consequences here," she said.
"However, my prediction is that the former president is going to tell everybody to continue to stall. They're going to fundraise off of this. Bannon himself absolutely I think is going to wear this as a badge of honor and martyr himself almost," Grisham added.
The importance of the January 6 committee is heightened by the midterm elections, where Republicans are hoping to retake control of the Congress, which would deeply imperil the panel's existence, Grisham told CNN.
"I think this makes the 2022 elections more vital than ever because I have a feeling, knowing them like I do, he's [Trump's] going to tell everyone to stall and that if the House takes over with his rubber stamp candidates that he wants to get in, the special committee will then go away. That's kind of what I foresee happening," she said.
"But that's not to take away from what the select committee has done. And I'm very, very glad that they've done that, and I'm glad the DOJ decided to do what they did with Bannon," Grisham added.
Even though Bannon officially left his White House position in August 2017, only months after Trump took office, Grisham said many staffers thought the former advisor was back in the then-president's orbit in the weeks before January 6.
"Now I was in the East Wing at that point in time, but it was definitely known that Bannon was very much back in the picture. I think that when things started to look dire, Bannon, of course, swooped in and had these grand plans and grand schemes and promised that, you know, all these patriots would fight for the president," she said.
Grisham pointed to reports of Bannon's periodic presence at the famed Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, just blocks from the White House, where an electoral "command center" met late last year to strategize ways to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
"Bannon was known for when he was in the White House having his big room with his white board and all these plans, so the things that we're hearing now about the Willard Hotel and this war room, that doesn't surprise me at all either," she said.
"Bannon was very, very good at telling the president what he wanted to hear," according to Grisham.
Grisham then continued with her criticism of Trump, pointing to his conduct surrounding the deadly events of January 6.
"The other day, you know, audio was released of him defending people who wanted to - who were running around the Capitol saying they wanted to hang Mike Pence, his vice president. This is really important, and this really is an attack on our democracy," she said.
"It's the day I resigned. It made me sick then, it's making me sick now. And I just hope people will understand how important this is and ... let's look forward to how we can never let this kind of thing happen again," Grisham went on to say.
Last month, Grisham released a bombshell memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," which chronicled her time in the often-tumultuous Trump White House.
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