After months of flatly refusing to cooperate, former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, whose trial on criminal contempt charges is set to begin this week, ridiculed the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday and dared its members to allow him to testify in public.
"Pray for our enemies, OK?" Bannon said on his War Room podcast. "Pray, because we're going medieval on these people. We're going to savage our enemies."
"So pray for them," he continued. "That's who needs prayers. Not MAGA, not War Room, and certainly not Steven K. Bannon."
Noting that another hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Bannon said, "We'll see … what happens this afternoon, but hey, my offer is out there."
"Here's what I need," the Trump ally said. "Give me a date, a time, a room number, a microphone, and a Holy Bible that I can take the oath on."
"Deliver that and we'll see how good you are little Jamie Raskin and Liz Cheney and all of it — serve it up!" he added.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" he believes that Bannon "had a change of heart" after watching people, like ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, speak to the committee.
"He's decided that he wants to come in, and if he wants to come in, I'm certain that the committee would be very interested in hearing from him," Raskin said.
Though Bannon has said he would rather testify in a public hearing, the committee has indicated that he needs to sit for a private interview first, usually in a sworn deposition.
"The way that we have treated every single witness is the same, that they come in, they talk to the committee there," Raskin said. "If they're going to take a deposition, they're sworn under oath. It's videotaped. It's recorded, and then we take it from there."
Several political commentators and legal analysts have cautioned against allowing Bannon to testify publicly.
Bloomberg Business reporter Joshua Green told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday that Bannon's abrupt cooperativeness can likely be chalked up to his desire to "undermine the credibility" of the House select committee and counter its narrative that Trump is a traitor.
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