UPDATE: Steve Bannon was ordered to report back to jail on July 1 to serve a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump‘s who served as his White Home chief strategist, can nonetheless search a keep of Decide Carl Nichols’ order, per the AP. However an appeals courtroom final month rejected Bannon’s arguments for why the conviction must be overturned.
Bannon now has a daily platform as podcast host, the place he has mentioned that Trump will search retribution in his subsequent time period, significantly after the previous president’s conviction in New York final week on felony prices.
Bannon was convicted for defying a congressional subpoena issued by the Home January sixth Committee. The committee was dissolved when Republicans took management of Congress final yr.
PREVIOUSLY: Steve Bannon’s conviction for failure to adjust to a congressional subpoena was upheld by a three-judge federal appeals courtroom in the present day, elevating the prospect that the podcaster and right-wing provocateur should serve a four-month sentence.
The appeals courtroom determination, made by appointees of Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, was unanimous.
The judges rejected Bannon’s protection — that he was counting on the recommendation of counsel in ignoring a subpoena from the January sixth Committee.
“As each this courtroom and the Supreme Courtroom have repeatedly defined, a opposite rule would contravene the textual content of the contempt statute and hamstring Congress’s investigatory authority,” the judges wrote. “As a result of now we have no foundation to depart from that binding precedent, and since none of Bannon’s different challenges to his convictions have benefit, we affirm.”
The January 6 committee had requested for paperwork and testimony from Bannon in 2021, however he by no means complied. The panel was his contact with Trump through the lead-up to the assault on the Capitol.
Of their opinion, the judges famous that Bannon “had predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that ‘all hell [wa]s going to interrupt unfastened’ the subsequent day.” Bannon a former prime adviser to Trump, however left the White Home in 2017 after about seven months. The judges additionally cited studies that Bannon “participated in discussions in late 2020 and early 2021 about efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcomes.”