WASHINGTON – A federal judge revoked the bail for Steve Bannon, the political strategist and former White House aide to former President Donald Trump, and ordered him to report to federal prison for his contempt of Congress conviction by July 1.
Bannon was convicted in July 2022 for defying a subpoena during the House investigation of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. He was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $6,500.
He remained free while he appealed the conviction to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel upheld the conviction unanimously May 10.
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves urged U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to jail Bannon because he is unlikely to reverse the verdict or win a new trial.
Bannon’s lawyer, David Schoen, argued Nichols had no authority to jail Bannon and doing so would be “gravely unjust and unfair.”
Nichols, who was appointed by Trump, said after the appeals ruling there was no longer justification to keep Bannon free.
“I can no longer conclude that his appeal raises substantial questions of law” likely to overturn his conviction, Nichols said.
Bannon told reporters outside the courthouse he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene, alleging his prosecution was politically motivated.
“All this is about one thing: shutting down the MAGA movement,” Bannon said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.
Why did the House panel subpoena Bannon?
The committee sought to question Bannon, a political strategist for Trump, in part because he told associates from China on Oct. 31, 2020, Trump would falsely declare victory even if he lost the election and said it would be a “firestorm.”
In a podcast, Bannon said former Vice President Mike Pence “spit the bit,” meaning he was no longer supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which the committee described as amplifying the pressure on Pence.
Bannon called Trump at least twice on Jan. 5, 2021.
Bannon one of two Trump aides convicted of contempt of Congress
Bannon was one of two people convicted, along with former White House aide Peter Navarro, for defying congressional subpoenas for the Jan. 6 inquiry.
Bannon’s case had raised the prospect of setting new rules governing the assertion of executive privilege, but the appeals panel found no reason to depart from previous rulings in the D.C. Circuit and at the Supreme Court that bar “willfully” defying a congressional subpoena.
“As both this court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly explained, a contrary rule would contravene the text of the contempt statute and hamstring Congress’s investigatory authority,” Judge Bradley Garcia wrote for the appeals court.
Navarro was jailed in March for his conviction for contempt of Congress.