A New York Times editorial, "Steve Bannon's Art of the Grift," says in part:
The looming question, however, is whether President Trump will keep Mr. Bannon at arm's length. Americans can feel little confidence that Mr. Bannon will receive a fair trial and, if convicted, a fair punishment. By commuting Roger Stone's sentence in July, Mr. Trump demonstrated a willingness to shelter his current and former associates from the legal consequences of their actions.
The Times' signal of concern that Bannon "receive a fair trial," is touching, but the newspaper sure isn't helping matters by running an editorial denouncing him as a grifter before he's even had the chance to mount a defense.
Do the Times editorialists really lack confidence that the federal judge to whom the case is assigned, U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres, an Obama appointee, will give Bannon a fair trial? Or is the issue that a Manhattan trial jury won't be fair to Bannon?
If we were Bannon's lawyer, William Burck—yes, the same William Burck who just won a huge Fourth Amendment victory in State of Florida v. Robert Kraft—we'd ask to have the case dismissed, or at least the venue changed, on the grounds that not even the New York Times editorialists think Bannon will get a fair trial.
Perhaps the editorial page editors can be called to testify about why they think New Yorkers and the federal courts that sit there could be trusted to give a fair trial to al Qaeda figure Khalid Shaikh Mohammed but not to Steve Bannon. Has the Trump presidency so adversely shaken the senses of New York jurors and federal judges? Or has it just deranged the liberal newspaper's editorial writers? In 2011 the Times blessed the prospect of a trial in New York City of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as an "opportunity to prove the fairness of the federal court system and restore the nation's reputation for providing justice for all," but the same editorial column now doubts that justice for Bannon is possible. I predict Bannon will eventually be cleared of these charges. The Times editorial sets the stage to denounce that as somehow unfair. For an editorial column concerned about fairness, setting it up so that if the guy is cleared, it's automatically evidence that the trial was unfair—well, let's just say if we were ever charged with a crime, we sure wouldn't want any New York Times editorial writers on our jury.