Is There a Ticking Clock?

Just 22 days after Steve Bannon was referred to the Department of Justice for contempt of Congress, we have an indictment. Is that a long time? No, very much not. Ken says that’s the speed you’d expect for someone who’s robbed a break or something “showy that involves guns.” What happens next? What does the government have to prove here? And what message does this send to the other people defying subpoenas?

Then: Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” has dropped her long-running defamation lawsuit against former Presidnet Trump, not long before he was supposed to finally be deposed. Zervos accused Trump of groping her at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007, and in 2016, Trump denied meeting her or greeting her inappropriately. She sued him for defamation, and he successfully delayed the litigation through his presidency. Lately though, it appeared that lawyers were negotiating his deposition. Now Zervos’s lawyers say she “no longer wishes to litigate against the defendant and has secured the right to speak freely about her experience.” Josh and Ken read the tea leaves here.

Plus: an update on the National Archives documents, Alex Jones, and Sidney Powell and the curious story of the supposed capture of CIA Director Gina Haspel…(what???)