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

WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after Steve Bannon was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying House committee subpoenas on Jan. 6, federal prosecutors told the Supreme Court that he It was time for Donald Trump’s former adviser to begin serving his four-month sentence. prison sentence.

“This Court recently denied a similar motion for release filed by another defendant who had completely defied a subpoena issued by the same committee that subpoenaed the plaintiff,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a court filing, referring to former Trump advisor Peter Navarro. “For reasons discussed 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 completing his sentence after reporting to prison in March.

Wednesday’s filing was made in response to Bannon’s last-minute request to the Supreme Court to allow him to stay out of prison and pursue his appeals. Federal Judge Carl Nichols had ordered Bannon to report to prison by next Monday after a dramatic hearing this month.

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

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

Bannon said in his Supreme Court filing that he “relied in good faith on the advice of his attorney” to ignore the House committee’s subpoena on Jan. 6, based on a possible assertion of executive privilege. But, as prosecutors noted in their previous sentencing memo, Bannon had long left the White House by the time the House committee became interested — when Trump tried to overturn the results of the presidential election of 2020 and stay in power at the top. -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 committee’s work on Jan. 6, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that Bannon’s conviction was the result of an “invalid” prosecution. House Republican leaders also announced that the bipartisan legal advisory group voted 3-2 along partisan lines to file an amicus brief in Bannon’s case before the D.C. Circuit. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement that GOP leaders believe former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “abused her authority” in organizing the special committee.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, a member of the Jan. 6 Committee, said Wednesday that the House Republicans’ decision is “shameful” and that their upcoming briefing “is not worth the paper it’s on.” published”.