WASHINGTON — Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon must report to prison by Monday after the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute bid to stave off his four-month sentence for defying subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 committee.
Bannon was convicted in Washington on two counts of contempt of Congress nearly two full years ago, in July 2022, and sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols had put his sentence on hold as he pursued an appeal of his conviction, which was rejected in May. Nichols then ordered Bannon to report to prison by July 1, saying there was no basis to continue to delay the sentence. An appeals court then rejected Bannon’s appeal of the decision, leaving only the Supreme Court to help him avoid incarceration.
Bannon was held in contempt of Congress after he blew off the Jan. 6 committee’s request for documents and testimony as part of its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power in the lead-up to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Bannon’s lawyer told the Supreme Court that he was relying upon the advice of counsel, saying he was waiting for issues of executive privilege to be settled. But as federal prosecutors noted in their 2022 sentencing memo, there was no operational claim of executive privilege, as Bannon had been a part of the Trump administration years earlier, not during the time frame being examined by the Jan. 6 committee.
Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who was sentenced to four months in federal prison on the same charges, is finishing up his sentence after he reported to prison in March.
Bannon, who is 70, has already been assigned an inmate number by the federal Bureau of Prisons: 05635-509.
Daniel Barnes contributed.
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