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Steve Bannon must start serving his four-month prison sentence on July 1, a judge ruled.
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Bannon was convicted in 2022 of contempt of Congress for defying a Jan. 6 committee subpoena.
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Bannon plans to appeal to the Supreme Court, claiming the Justice Department cannot silence him.
Steve Bannon, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, must begin serving his four-month prison sentence on July 1, a district judge in Washington DC has ruled.
Trump’s former chief strategist was found guilty of two charges of contempt of Congress in 2022 after failing to appear for a Jan. 6 House committee hearing and refusing to turn over documents related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election to make.
Bannon, 70, initially received a reprieve from his prison sentence by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, as the Breitbart veteran appealed his conviction.
But a federal appeals court upheld the original sentence in early May, and now Nichols says it’s time for Bannon to serve his sentence.
“I don’t believe the original basis for my stay any longer exists,” Nichols told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Bannon told reporters outside the courthouse that he plans to take his appeal to a higher court.
“I have great lawyers, and if we have to, we’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court,” he said.
The right-wing podcaster blasted the “entire Justice Department” and said the agency would not be able to “silence Trump” and his allies.
“There is no prison built or constructed that will ever silence me,” Bannon added.
His threatened prison sentence comes as Peter Navarro, another close Trump ally, surrendered in March to serve his four-month prison sentence after also refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist and senior adviser in the White House for about seven months, previously said he would be willing to go to prison for the former president.
If he starts serving his sentence on July 1, his four-month sentence would last until just before the presidential election on November 5.
Read the original article on Business Insider
