WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after Steve Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress for ignoring the House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 committee subpoenas, federal prosecutors have told the Supreme Court that the time has come for the former Donald Trump advisor to serve his four-month prison sentence.
“This Court recently denied a similar request for release by another defendant in complete violation of a subpoena from the same committee 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 prison on the same charges as Bannon, is completing his sentence after reporting to prison in March.
Wednesday’s filing was in response to Bannon’s eleventh-hour bid asking the Supreme Court to let him stay out of jail and hear further appeals. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols had ordered Bannon to report to jail next Monday after a dramatic hearing this month.
After Nichols’ ruling, a federal appeals court denied Bannon’s request to suspend his prison sentence pending further appeal, meaning only the Supreme Court could stay the sentence. The Supreme Court had asked the Justice Department to file a brief statement explaining its position on the case by 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
Bannon responded to the Justice Department’s filing in a brief later Wednesday and attempted to draw a distinction between himself and Navarro, calling the two cases “easily distinguishable.”
Bannon, through his then-attorney, had entered into discussions with the House of Representatives 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, did not do this,” McCotter wrote in the court document.
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 sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022. The sentence was stayed pending the appeal, 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 because there was no was a legal basis for continued residence.
Bannon said in an earlier filing with the Supreme Court that he “relied in good faith on the advice of his attorney” to ignore the House committee’s Jan. 6 subpoena, based on a potential assertion of privilege. executive power. But, as prosecutors noted in their earlier sentencing memo, Bannon was long out of the White House during the period the House committee was interested in — when Trump was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to stay in power. -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 Subcommittee on Oversight has worked to undermine the Jan. 6 committee’s work, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that Bannon’s conviction the result of an “invalid” prosecution.
The House Republican leadership also announced that the Bipartisan Legal Advisory group had voted 3-2 along partisan lines to file an amicus brief in Bannon’s case with the D.C. Circuit. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement Wednesday that Republican leadership believed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “abused her authority” in organizing the Select Committee .
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, who served on the Jan. 6 committee, called House Republicans’ move “shameful” and said their upcoming briefing “isn’t worthy of headlines.” on which it stands.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
