WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to report to prison on July 1 to begin a four-month prison sentence for defying Jan. 6 committee subpoenas after a higher court rejected his appeal.
Bannon was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022 for defying committee subpoenas, but his sentence was suspended while he appealed the case. U.S. District Judge Carl said Thursday that he did not believe the “original basis” for suspending the imposition of Bannon’s sentence existed any longer after an appeals court upheld Bannon’s conviction. Bannon can still appeal Nichol’s decision that he must report to prison.
Bannon was sentenced more than a year and a half ago, in October 2022, to four months in prison, the same sentence currently served by Trump’s former advisor, Peter Navarro, who also refused to comply with a subpoena from the Committee of 6 January.
“The defendant chose loyalty to Donald Trump over compliance with the law,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston, who is now on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team, told jurors during closing arguments in 2022.
Bannon’s sentence was suspended pending appeal, and his lawyers presented his case to a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in November. The appeals court upheld Bannon’s conviction in May, and federal prosecutors soon filed a motion asking Nichols to order Bannon to report to prison. Federal prosecutors told Nichols there was “no legal basis” for the continued suspension of the sentence after the federal appeals court rejected his appeal.
Bannon’s lawyers argued that the sentence should be suspended until they appeal to the appeals court and the Supreme Court. Any delay, of course, would benefit Bannon if Trump were elected president in November and decided – as he did on the last day of his presidency on January 20, 2021 – to pardon Bannon on federal criminal charges.
Bannon smiled as he passed through security to enter the courtroom Thursday morning. A person nearby said “Trump ’24!” at him and Bannon smiled and shook his hand.
After the judge’s decision, he seemed calm and continued to smile. Bannon’s lawyer, David Schoen, jumped into action, becoming much more enthusiastic than he had been throughout the rest of the hearing.
Judge Nichols told him, “One thing you need to learn as a lawyer is that when the judge makes his decision, you don’t get up and start yelling,” adding through Schoen’s protests, “I’ve had enough.”
“I’m not yelling,” Schoen retorted, saying he was “in love.”
“You’re sending a man to prison who you thought was following the law, we don’t do that in my system,” Schoen said, calling the decision “contrary to our system of justice.”
“I think you should sit down,” Nichols replied.
Nichols, a Trump appointee, oversaw several Jan. 6 cases. He is the judge who rejected the government’s use of a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, which was used against hundreds of defendants on January 6, as well as Trump himself. That case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the use of the law in April. On Wednesday, Nichols sentenced a Jan. 6 defendant who assaulted police officers with bear spray — and who was caught thanks to a sting operation a woman launched on the dating app Bumble — to more than six years in federal prison.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
