Steve Bannon planned an uprising for the 2016 Republican National Convention that foreshadowed the Jan. 6 insurrection.
According to Joshua Green's 2017 Devil's Bargain, Bannon plotted an all-out war in Cleveland if then-House speaker Paul Ryan tried to prevent Trump from gaining the GOP nomination at a brokered convention, in an action that closely resembled what actually did transpire four and a half years later at the U.S. Capitol during the congressional certification of Joe Biden's election win.
"Bannon was prepared to sic the alt-right on Paul Ryan if he tried to steal the GOP nomination from Trump at a brokered convention," Green wrote. "'Pepe's gonna stomp their ass,' [Bannon] said, referring to the racist frog."
The former Breitbart impresario was named Trump's campaign manager a few weeks after the convention, on Aug. 17, 2016, and then served as his first White House strategist, and Green's book describes how Bannon mobilized online gamers and other "rootless white males" into a political movement that helped propel the former reality TV star into office.
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The potential for violence was worrying enough in 2016 that news organizations recommended body armor for journalists covering the event, and armed demonstrators were present around Quicken Loans Arena under Ohio's conceal and carry laws at the time.
Bannon, who is set to go on trial Monday on contempt of Congress charges related to the Jan. 6 investigation, telegraphed that violent action in October 2020, before the election that Trump ultimately lost, by telling Showtime’s “The Circus” that there might be so much uncertainty about the voting that Congress would be forced to decide the results.
He also predicted Oct. 31, 2020, that Trump would declare premature victory on Election Day to sow doubt about the contest, and the House select committee has shown video of Bannon warning on Jan. 5, 2020, that "all hell" would break loose the next day.
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The House select committee has pointed out that Bannon and Trump spoke twice the day before Jan. 6, and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that the former president asked his chief of staff Mark Meadows to go Jan. 5 to the Willard Hotel, where Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn and other election deniers had set up a "war room."
Hutchinson testified that she stopped Meadows, who had warned her about the potential for violence at the Capitol, from going to the Willard Hotel for a meeting involving Giuliani, but she said he called in to participate.
