“A judge said Monday that he would not delay the contempt of Congress trial of Steve Bannon, just one week before it is set to begin,” NBC News reports.

Washington Post: The escalating dispute between Trump’s and Bannon’s legal teams.

Charlie Sykes: “Beyond the grift, the key to understanding Bannon — and his influence on the MAGA right— is recognizing that he’s a revolutionary, who knows he doesn’t need to persuade, and who doesn’t need a majority. Bannon knows that he just needs a hard-core vanguard willing to do whatever it takes.”

“And his goal is to burn it all down.”

“This also explains the fundamental asymmetry of our politics. On today’s podcast we discuss whether Bannon is playing checkers while his opponents are playing chess.”

“But I suggested a different image: Bannon is bringing an axe to a chess game — and his opponents haven’t figured that out yet, even though he’s told us repeatedly who and what he is.”

“A federal judge refused to throw Steve Bannon a lifeline on Wednesday, instead deciding that the right wing provocateur will indeed go to trial in the coming weeks for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee,” the Daily Beast reports.

“However, the judge indicated he may eventually hold the Department of Justice accountable for spying on one of Bannon’s defense lawyers and secretly obtaining his call and email records.”

“Bill Stepien, who told the Jan. 6 committee that he quit Donald Trump’s campaign after the 2020 election because he could not go along with his election lies, nevertheless continues to coordinate Trump’s political operation, which is built almost entirely on spreading those exact election lies,” the HuffPost reports.

He has already made at least $1.4 million by fueling it.

Jennifer Senior begins a profile of Steve Bannon by reviewing the stream of text messages he’s sent to her.

“There are certainly enough of them. He says he has five phones, two encrypted, and he’s forever pecking away, issuing pronunciamentos with incontinent abandon—after midnight; during commercial breaks for his show, War Room; sometimes while the broadcast is still live.”

“You can discern much of Bannon’s mad character and contradictions in these exchanges. The chaos and the focus, the pugnacity and the enthusiasm, the transparency and the industrial-grade bullshit. Also, the mania: logomania, arithmomania, monomania (he’d likely cop to all of these, especially that last one—he’s the first to say that one of the features of his show is “wash rinse repeat”). Garden-variety hypermania (with a generous assist from espressos). And last of all, perhaps above all else, straight-up megalomania, which even those who profess affection for the man can see, though it appears to be a problem only for those who believe, as I do, that he’s attempting to insert a lit bomb into the mouth of American democracy.”

“The Justice Department is suing Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chair, for almost $3 million in penalties related to his alleged failure to file reports disclosing more than 20 bank accounts he controlled in foreign countries, including Cyprus, the United Kingdom and St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Politico reports.

Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, the Independent reports.

The Washington Post reviewed more than 20 hours of video filmed for the documentary, A Storm Foretold, which is expected to be released later this year.

“Roger Stone allowed the filmmakers to document his activities during extended periods over more than two years. In addition to interviews and moments when Stone spoke directly to the camera, they also captured fly-on-the-wall footage of his actions, candid off-camera conversations from a microphone he wore and views of his iPhone screen as he messaged associates on an encrypted app.”

“Since the beginning of 2020, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s reelection campaign has paid the Democratic consulting firm Authentic nearly a half million dollars for digital work and list acquisition,” Politico reports.

“Inside the firm, staffers have revolted over the contract, expressing shock and agitation that a company that professes fidelity to a set of progressive values has worked alongside a lawmaker many believe are standing in the way of progress on those values.”

“Roger Stone, a longtime associate of Donald Trump, is auctioning off a copy of a 1990s magazine cover he says is signed by the former president as part of a larger fundraising campaign to pay for his legal defenses and medical bills,” Politico reports.

“If the bid exceeds $20,000 dollars, the bidder gets the physical version of the magazine along with ‘one of only one’ digital copy, which Stone marketed as an NFT, or a non-fungible token.”

“What bothers me about James Carville’s remarks is that he’s glib about the fight for racial equality or full equality for all our citizens. I understand what James is trying to say, but I think it’s just a false equation. But he did win some elections back in the ’90s.”

— Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), quoted by the New York Times, pushing back on Carville’s claim that “stupid wokeness” is to blame for Democratic losses in last week’s elections.

James Carville told PBS Newshour that he blamed his party’s recent losses and weak performance in state elections on “stupid wokeness.”

Said Carville: “What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools. I mean that — people see that.”

He added: “It’s just really — has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something. They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s backlash and a frustration at that.”

“A prominent Washington lobbyist close to Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, is warning Republican political consultants that they must choose between working for Rep. Liz Cheney or Mr. McCarthy, an ultimatum that marks the full rupture between the two House Republicans,” the New York Times reports.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was a frequent visitor to Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion, Rolling Stone reports.

“Although Epstein’s reputation was badly damaged after he spent 13 months in a Florida jail for soliciting sex from a teen, the conviction didn’t stop the flow of wealthy and famous people who flocked to his $77 million Upper East Side mansion. Behind the 15-foot oak front doors, Epstein played host to old friends like Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and new ones like Steve Bannon.”

Roger Stone was served with papers relating to a Capitol riot lawsuit while live on radio and answering a question about why Donald Trump should run in 2024.