Steve Bannon’s lawyer Emergency Motion The move was made on Tuesday to stave off jail time as President Trump’s former chief White House strategist seeks to appeal his conviction for ignoring a subpoena from a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Bannon’s lawyer, R. Trent McCotter, filed papers in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asking that Bannon turn himself in by a July 1 deadline and serve his four-month sentence.
“If the Committee’s decision is upheld, it will have far-reaching implications, including separation of powers concerns,” wrote McCotter and other lawyers at Boyden Gray, the Washington law firm representing Bannon, 70.
“Prior to Mr. Bannon’s prosecution, it had been 50 years since the government had a jury convict someone who failed to properly respond to a congressional subpoena, and controversy over congressional subpoenas had arguably abounded in that time,” they said.
Bannon’s legal team also argued that prosecutors “pursued a novel and aggressive theory of liability” and suggested they may appeal the verdict to the US Supreme Court.
Lawyers have asked the D.C. Court of Appeals for a decision by June 18.
Last month, a three-judge panel upheld Bannon’s July 2022 conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify before a special House of Representatives committee on Jan. 6.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., on Thursday ordered a Trump ally to begin serving his prison sentence a little more than a week before his former boss’ sentence after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of business fraud for covering up evidence of hush money payments to porn stars before the 2016 election.
Peter Navarro, a former White House trade adviser to President Trump, filed a similar last-minute motion to avoid jail in March after he was convicted of failing to comply with a Jan. 6 special committee subpoena.
Navarro, 74, turned himself in to a federal prison in Miami days after the filing and told reporters he would serve his four-month sentence “proudly.”
Trump and Bannon had a tumultuous relationship, with the former president firing the strategist in early August 2017, but the two have since reconciled and together have made widely public claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Shortly before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2021, President Trump, 77, pardoned Bannon from federal fraud and money laundering charges related to a private fundraiser that his former chief strategist held to purportedly raise funds for the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The case was scheduled for trial in May 2021.
Bannon’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
