DOJ tells Supreme Court that Steve Bannon’s prison sentence should not be delayed

WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after Steve Bannon was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying Jan. 6 House committee subpoenas, federal prosecutors told the Supreme Court it’s time for Donald Trump’s former adviser to start acting. fulfill his four-month term. 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 finishing his sentence after reporting to prison in March.

Wednesday’s request was a response to Bannon’s last-minute request asking the Supreme Court to allow him to stay out of prison and pursue further appeals. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ordered Bannon to report to prison next Monday following a dramatic hearing this month.

After Nichols’ ruling, a federal appeals court denied Bannon’s request to suspend the prison sentence pending further appeal, meaning 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 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 appellate 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 imprisonment.

Bannon said in his Supreme Court filing that he “relied in good faith on the advice of his attorney” to ignore the Jan. 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 claimed 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 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, a member of the January 6 Committee, said Wednesday that the action by House Republicans is “disgraceful” and that their upcoming briefing is “not worth the paper it is published on.” .