Disgraced former Trump adviser to debate 2016 election with Democratic Party supporter in the Czech capital
Steve Bannon, the former strategic adviser to US President Donald Trump, will visit the Czech Republic next week. He will participate in a debate about the 2016 US presidential elections that will be held by the Prague Centre for Transatlantic Relations of the CEVRO Institute..
Alexandr Vondra, the director of the Centre, informed the Czech News Agency of the appearance on 14 May. Bannon will appear on 22 May to discuss the election at Prague’s Žofín Palace with the lawyer and lobbyist Lanny Davis, who is close to the Democratic Party in the USA, for which Hillary Clinton was the candidate in 2016.
The Centre holds regular events with guests from the USA, according to Vondra, and most recently organized a debate with US Ambassador Stephen King. The Centre has taken advantage of the opportunity to hold this gathering since Bannon and Davis are both coming to the Czech Republic at the invitation of a business consortium called the Czechoslovak Group.
On the website of the Czechoslovak Group it describes itself as a “holding enterprise promoting activities of a group of industrial and trade companies from the fields of defence and civilian industries, residing mainly in the Czech and Slovak Republic.” It was previously called the Excalibur Group and is an umbrella organization for roughly 20 companies.
Both Bannon and Davis will be in the Czech Republic beginning on Monday, 21 May, when they will visit the Tatra Trucks firm, a producer of armed vehicles for the Tatra Defence Vehicle company of the radar firms Retia and Eldis. Before being appointed a strategic adviser to the White House, Bannon led the extremist, xenophobic news server Breitbart News in the United States.
Bannon was removed as an adviser last August after he was involved in crafting the White House’s restrained response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia that was provoked by white racists there. Heather D. Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal from Charlottesville, was killed and 19 others were injured in what police called a deliberate attack using a personal vehicle.
According to the US media, the suspect in this incident, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old from Ohio who reportedly had expressed sympathy for Nazi Germany during his time as a student at Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky,was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and failure to stop following an accident resulting in death. He was arrested and held without bail.
On 18 August 2017 Fields was charged with three additional counts of aggravated malicious wounding and two additional counts of malicious wounding. The murder charge was changed to first-degree murder on 14 December 2017.
Footage introduced as new evidence for elevating the charges included a video from a nearby restaurant and aerial footage from a Virginia State Police helicopter. Both videos were sealed by the lead prosecutor.
The helicopter the footage was from also crashed during its surveillance of the rally during which the vehicular murder was perpetrated, killing two Virginia State Police officers. In January 2018, a court hearing was held in which 26 November 2018 was set as the date for Fields’s trial to begin.
