President Trump “personally made the decision to curtail the testimony of former chief White House political strategist Steve Bannon before the House Intelligence Committee,” Foreign Policy reports.

“Trump acted to limit Bannon’s testimony based on legal advice provided by Uttam Dhillon, a deputy White House counsel, who concluded that the administration might have legitimate executive privilege claims to restrict testimony by Bannon and other current and former aides to the president.”

“But Dhillon has also concluded that Bannon and other current and former Trump administration officials do not have legitimate claims to executive privilege when it comes to providing information or testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller.”

“Steve Bannon has struck a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and will be interviewed by prosecutors instead of testifying before the grand jury,” CNN reports.

“He is expected to cooperate with the special counsel.”

Former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon was subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller “to testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation into possible links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia,” the New York Times reports.

“The move marked the first time Mr. Mueller is known to have used a grand jury subpoena to seek information from a member of Mr. Trump’s inner circle.”

“The subpoena could be a negotiating tactic. Mr. Mueller is likely to allow Mr. Bannon to forgo the grand jury appearance if he agrees to instead be questioned by investigators in the less formal setting of the special counsel’s offices in Washington… But it was not clear why Mr. Mueller treated Mr. Bannon differently than the dozen administration officials who were interviewed in the final months of last year and were never served with a subpoena.”

President Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he feels “betrayed” by former adviser Steve Bannon, “depicting him as a self-promoter who inflated his importance in the president’s election victory.”

Said Trump: “Steve’s greatest asset is that he was able to convince a corrupt media that he was responsible for my win.”

He also faulted Bannon for participating in a new book chronicling dysfunction and drama in the Trump presidency: “I feel betrayed because you’re not supposed to do that.”

Battered by the backlash from Michael Wolff’s book, Steve Bannon is trying to make amends with the Trump family, providing a statement to Axios that expresses “regret” to President Trump and praises his son, Donald Trump Jr.

Josh Green: “What Bannon did by talking to Wolff for this book — and by extension, probably, talking to me for my book — is pour a can of gasoline over his head and light a match. Trump appears to have broken with him in a way that seems final and ultimate, even tagging him with a dreaded nickname, ‘Sloppy Steve,’ which I think we can all admit is pretty fantastic.”

“Bannon has been in the doghouse before and come back. I hear that he thinks he can come back from this, too. We’ll see; nothing’s ever quite impossible in Trump’s world. You can never say never.”

“As Bannon has told people in the past, Trump is entirely transactional. But if he loses his platform at Breitbart News, then it’s hard for me to see how he’ll be able to wield the kind of influence that I describe in “Devil’s Bargain,” and that he seemed to have regained after leaving the White House last year.”

Jonathan Swan: “Friends and allies of Steve Bannon had been warning him for weeks to lay off Jared Kushner — telling him that President Trump would turn against him if he kept publicly attacking the son-in-law.”

“What we’re hearing: Tommy Hicks, a Trump campaign fundraiser and the chairman of the favored pro-Trump outside group America First Policies, relayed a message from the White House to Bannon to ‘knock it the fuck off’ or else Trump would blow him up.”

“Some of Bannon’s closest allies are urging him to still issue such a statement and make peace with Trump and his family. Bannon is resisting. He’s quite like Trump in this respect: he views any apology or admission of error as a sign of weakness. But it may be the only way to preserve some sort of a political future for himself.”

“You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner… It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

— Stephen Bannon, quoted in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House on the Russian investigation.