It’s time to stop delaying Steve Bannon’s prison sentence, DOJ tells Supreme Court

WASHINGTON – Almost two years later Steve Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying House subpoenas January 6th committee, federal prosecutors told the Supreme Court it’s time for the first donald trump counselor to begin serving his four-month prison sentence.

“This Court recently denied a similar request for release filed by another defendant who completely defied a subpoena issued by the same commission that subpoenaed the applicant,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a court filing, referring to former Trump adviser Peter Navarro. “For reasons set out in more detail below, the same result is warranted here.”

Navarro, who was sentenced to four months in federal prison on the same charges as Bannon, is serving his sentence after having reported to prison in March.

Wednesday’s performance was a response to Bannon’s statement last minute bid asking the Supreme Court to allow him to stay out of prison and file new appeals. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ordered Bannon report to prison next Monday after a dramatic hearing this month.

After the Nichols ruling, a federal appeals court denied Bannon’s request suspend the prison sentence pending further appeal, meaning that only the Supreme Court could suspend the sentence. The high court asked the Justice Department to file a brief stating its opinion on the matter by 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

Bannon responded to the Justice Department’s request in a statement later on Wednesday and attempted to draw a distinction between himself and Navarro, calling the two cases “easily distinguishable.”

Bannon, through his attorney at the time, had engaged in discussions with the House committee on Jan. 6 about his subpoena and related privilege issues, Bannon’s current attorney, Trent McCotter, argued Wednesday. “Mr. Navarro, on the other hand, failed to do so,” McCotter wrote in the court filing.

The Supreme Court could rule on Bannon’s appeal at any time.

Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022 and was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022. The sentence was suspended pending appeals, and Nichols made the decision after a panel of federal appeals judges upheld Bannon’s conviction in May and federal prosecutors asked him to order Bannon to report to prison, saying there was no legal basis for continued detention.

Bannon said in a previously filed filing with the Supreme Court that he “relied in good faith on the advice of his attorney” to ignore the January 6 House committee subpoena based on a potential assertion of executive privilege. But as prosecutors noted in their previous sentencing memorandum, Bannon had long been out of the White House by the time the House committee was interested — when Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and remain in power in leadership. -until the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who as chairman of the House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee worked to undermine the work of the Jan. 6 committee, has filed suit friend’s briefing with the Supreme Court, in which he argued that Bannon’s conviction was the result of an “invalid” process.

House Republican leadership also announced that the Bipartisan Legal Advisory group voted 3-2 along party lines to file an amicus brief in Bannon’s case before the D.C. Circuit. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., he said in a statement Wednesday that GOP leadership believed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “abused her authority” in organizing the Select Committee.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, who was a member of the Jan. 6 committee, called the House Republicans’ action “disgraceful” and said their upcoming briefing is “not worth the paper it’s published on.”

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with