- Steve Bannon told aides that Trump "would lie about anything," per a new book.
- The quote comes from a new book by the Politico reporter Jonathan Lemire, cited in The Guardian.
- A recent report said Bannon told associates before the 2020 election that Trump was already planning to declare victory.
The former White House strategist Steve Bannon told aides that former President Donald Trump would often lie to win arguments, according to a new book cited by The Guardian.
Bannon said Trump "would say anything, he would lie about anything," The Guardian reported.
He also said that Trump lies "to win whatever exchange he [is] having at the moment," according to the outlet.
The quote comes from "The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020," written by Politico's White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire, which is set to be published on July 26.
The "big lie" refers to the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud.
Bannon pushed these voter-fraud claims after the election, though the former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg told The Atlantic last month that the strategist only pushed the conspiracy theory to get a pardon. Bannon received a pardon as one of Trump's last acts in office.
The book excerpt comes on the heels of a Mother Jones report that said Bannon said before Election Day that Trump was already planning to reject the 2020 election results.
In the audio, recorded during an October 2020 meeting between Bannon and his associates, he can be heard saying that Trump is "just gonna say he's a winner" even if he loses.
The House January 6 committee is investigating Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 election results and the subsequent Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Bannon initially refused to engage with a subpoena from the committee, leading to his indictment by a federal grand jury in November 2021 on two counts of contempt of Congress. Bannon's criminal trial is set to start on Monday.
On Thursday, US District Court Judge Carl Nichols once again refused to delay the trial, rejecting Bannon's request to push it back due to the publicity surrounding the House investigation.
During a pre-trial hearing, Nichols said he was hopeful that the jury selection process would filter out any bias against Bannon. He also said he would consider delaying the trial if it proved difficult to find a suitable jury.
Days earlier, Nichols had denied a request to delay Bannon's trial, saying he would not allow Bannon to argue that executive privilege excused his decision to not comply with sitting for questioning or turning over subpoenaed records to the January 6 committee.
Last week, Bannon offered to testify before the committee, which prosecutors dismissed as a "last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability."