Federal prosecutors ordered the judge overseeing former President Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s contempt of Congress case to begin serving a four-month prison sentence after an appeals court last week upheld his conviction. requested that the decision be made.
Attorneys for the Justice Department filed a request Tuesday with Judge Carl Nichols of the District of Columbia Circuit Court asking him to lift Bannon’s suspended sentence.
The suspension had previously been imposed while the appeal process was ongoing. On Friday, prosecutors argued there was “no longer a legal basis” for a suspended sentence after a federal appeals court panel rejected Bannon’s bid to overturn his conviction.
“As a result, there are no longer ‘serious questions of law that would likely result in an order for reversal or retrial,'” prosecutors said. I wrote in my Tuesday submission..
The Hill has reached out to Bannon’s attorney for comment.
“I’m shocked that they’re trying to silence MAGA voices,” Bannon told ABC News following the allegations.
Bannon, who served as former President Donald Trump’s campaign adviser in 2016, failed to appear for a January 6 deposition ordered by a now-disbanded House committee and to produce documents subpoenaed by the committee. He was convicted in 2022 of both charges of refusing to. He was sentenced in October 2022 to four months in prison and ordered to pay a $6,500 fine.
His defense team appealed the conviction to a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court, which upheld the verdict due to the timing of the arguments.
“There is no dispute that Mr. Bannon first raised these claims in district court, long after the deadline to respond to the subpoena had passed,” Judge Brad Garcia wrote for the panel. Ta.
“Witnesses cannot defend contempt of Congress based on affirmative defenses that they could have raised at the time they were ordered to produce documents or appear in court, but failed,” Garcia added.
The appeal decision is a big deal for Bannon and former Trump aide Peter Navarro, who is also serving a four-month prison sentence in Florida for failing to comply with a Jan. 6 subpoena from the committee. It was the latest blow.
Navarro also failed to have his conviction vacated after the Supreme Court declined to intervene and the D.C. Circuit upheld a lower court’s finding that the appeal did not raise “substantial questions of law.” did.
Mr. Bannon can still ask the full court of appeals to reconsider the case, delay the sentence, or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the case.
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