A federal judge on Thursday ordered Steve Bannon to begin serving his prison sentence by July 1. The former Trump adviser will serve a four-month stint in prison for defying January 6 Committee subpoenas.
Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt in July 2022 and sentenced in October of that year, but his sentencing had been delayed while he appealed the ruling. The United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the appeal in May.
Judge Carl J. Nichols sided with federal prosecutors on Thursday who had argued that, because his appeal had been rejected, there was no longer any basis for the sentencing hold.
“I don’t believe that the original basis for my stay of Mr. Bannon’s sentence exists any longer,” Nichols said, referencing the Court of Appeals panel decision. “I no longer consider that his appeal raises substantial questions of law of a kind likely to reverse conviction.”
Bannon attorney David Schoen argued that the Court of Appeals panel decision was insufficient, saying the matter would not be resolved until the full D.C. Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in.
“By the Government’s own account, these issues can only be fully reviewed on their merits by the Court of Appeals sitting en banc or by the United States Supreme Court,” Schoen wrote in a filing. “Therefore there is no basis for considering the removal of the stay of the sentence pending appeal until the appeals process has fully run its course.”
Speaking to reporters after the ruling, Bannon claimed the ruling was motivated by politics.
“This is about shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump,” Bannon said. “Not only are we winning, we are going to prevail, and every number and every poll shows that. There’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up. There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up. All victory to MAGA.”
Former president Donald Trump weighed in with a post on his Truth Social account, saying the members of the January 6 Committee should be indicted themselves.
“It is a Total and Complete American Tragedy that the Crooked Joe Biden Department of Injustice is so desperate to jail Steve Bannon, and every other Republican, for that matter, for not SUBMITTING to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, made up of all Democrats, and two CRAZED FORMER REPUBLICAN LUNATICS, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, and Liz ‘Out of Her Mind’ Cheney,” Trump wrote. “It has been irrefutably proven that it was the Unselects who committed actual crimes when they deleted all material evidence, in a pathetic attempt to protect Crazy Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats from the TRUTH — THAT I DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG. The unAmerican Weaponization of our Law Enforcement has reached levels of Illegality never thought possible before. INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE FOR ILLEGALLY DELETING AND DESTROYING ALL OF THEIR ‘FINDINGS!’ MAGA2024”
Bannon played a leadership role on Trump’s 2016 campaign team and joined the White House as chief strategist and counselor to the president. He held that position in the administration until August 2017, shortly after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. Since leaving the White House, he has hosted Bannon’s War Room, a television, radio, and podcast program broadcast by the Real America’s Voice network.
Bannon is not the only former Trump administration official to receive a contempt of Congress sentence. Trade adviser Peter Navarro reported to prison to begin serving a four-month sentence in March of this year after being convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in September 2023. Like Bannon, Navarro refused to comply with subpoenas from the January 6 Committee.
Trump himself faces a bevy of legal issues. Aside from his recent conviction by a New York jury on 34 felony charges for falsifying business records brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, the former president faces election-interference cases in the state of Georgia and at the federal level, as well as charges of illegally retaining classified documents. The Georgia case hit a snag Wednesday as an appeals court paused the case indefinitely while a panel of judges determines whether the scandal-ridden Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is eligible to serve as prosecutor.