Former President Donald Trump‘s top aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner claimed Steve Bannon once threatened to break him “in half” if Kusher was disloyal to him, according to an excerpt of his new memoir that will be released in September.
Kushner detailed a tense moment in the Cabinet Room after one of Trump’s senior economic advisers, Gary Cohn, told him that Bannon had been leaking information about him.
“Steve, you gotta stop leaking on Gary,” Kushner recalled telling Bannon in Breaking History: A White House Memoir. “We’re trying to build a team here.”
“Cohn’s the one leaking on me…. Jared, right now, you’re the one undermining the President’s agenda,” Bannon responded.
“And if you go against me, I will break you in half. Don’t f— with me,” Trump’s former chief strategist added.
Kushner noted that although he didn’t get along with Bannon, he surprised Trump by supporting the President’s decision to pardon him.
“Bannon single-handedly caused more problems for me than anyone else in my time in Washington,” Kushner wrote. “He probably leaked and lied about me more than everyone else combined. He played dirty and dragged me into the mud of the Russia investigation. But now that he was in trouble, I felt like helping him was the right thing to do.”
Last month, Bannon was found guilty of two contempt of Congress charges for failing to cooperate with the House select committee that has been investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack for the past year. They subpoenaed him last fall, but he argued that he couldn’t testify due to Trump’s claim of executive privilege.
The Justice Department argued that Trump had never claimed the privilege. Still, Trump wrote a letter to Bannon in July waiving the immunity, and Bannon agreed to testify.
The Justice Department, however, argued that his compliance did not make up for the months that he dodged the subpoenas.
The first count Bannon was convicted on was for not showing up to his hearing date last October. The second one was for not handing over subpoenaed documents by the same October date.
