(Headline USA) Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, must report to prison by July 1 to serve his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the Democrat-controlled Jan. 6th Commission, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington granted the Justice Department’s request to make Bannon begin his prison term after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court last month upheld his contempt of Congress conviction.
Bannon is expected to seek a stay of the judge’s order, which could delay his surrender date. He told reporters outside the courthouse: “I’ve got great lawyers, and we’re going to go all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”
Nichols, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, a Republican, had initially allowed Bannon to remain free while he fought his conviction.
But prosecutors urged the judge to revoke his bond after a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said all of Bannon’s challenges lack merit. Prosecutor John Crabb told the judge it was “very unlikely” that the full appeals court or the Supreme Court would throw out Bannon’s conviction.
Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents related to his involvement in Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election.
Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by Trump’s claim of executive privilege. But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Trump had fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the riot,
Bannon’s lawyers argued at trial that he wasn’t acting in bad faith, but was trying to avoid running afoul of executive privilege objections Trump had raised. The onetime presidential adviser said he wanted to have a Trump lawyer in the room for his appearance, but the committee wouldn’t allow it.
Bannon’s lawyers told the appeals court that the conviction should be overturned because, among other reasons, they said the committee’s subpoena was invalid. Bannon also argued that the judge that oversaw the trial wrongly quashed subpoenas seeking testimony and records from the committee’s own members, staffers and counsel his lawyers argued could have bolstered his defense.
The appeals court said all of his challenges lacked merit.
A second Trump aide, trade advisor Peter Navarro, was also convicted of contempt of Congress and reported to prison in March to serve his four-month sentence. Navarro has maintained that he couldn’t cooperate with the committee because Trump had invoked executive privilege. But courts have rejected that argument, finding Navarro couldn’t prove Trump had actually invoked it.
Navarro’s case, along with Bannon’s, marked the first time in roughly four decades that any such cases had been prosecuted by the DOJ, despite recent examples including Lois Lerner, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton, all of whom brazenly disregarded congressional subpoenas during the Obama administration.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
