Steve Bannon must go to jail after Supreme Court rejects emergency bid
June 28 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court on Friday rejected former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon's last-ditch effort to avoid prison while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction.
The high court's decision means Bannon must begin his four-month prison sentence Monday.
The conservative commentator and Trump ally was convicted nearly two years ago for refusing to testify and hand over evidence to the now disbanded House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Bannon rebuked the subpoena, arguing a lawyer for Trump indicated he invoked executive privilege over the information in question.
Bannon only served the Trump administration for seven months in 2017, and the information requested by the select committee was from 2020 to 2021.
The House in October 2021 voted to hold him in contempt of Congress, and he was indicted the following month on two charges of criminal contempt.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who presided over the case, blocked Bannon's lawyer from presenting evidence that the defendant relied in good faith on the notion of executive privilege, despite there being no evidence that Trump had invoked such privilege.
The jury in July 2022 found him guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress, and Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison. Nichols, however, allowed Bannon to remain free while he appealed his conviction.
Since then, Bannon has exhausted all of his efforts. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted to uphold his conviction, after which Nichols agreed to lift the pause in Bannon's sentence and ordered him to report to prison by July 1.
Bannon then sought emergency relief from the full D.C. appeals court, but lost that bid as well.
Bannon's legal woes are almost identical to that of former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who also is serving a four-month prison sentence in Miami after being convicted for defying the Jan. 6 committee.
Like Bannon, Navarro pulled out all the stops to avoid prison time while he appealed his conviction and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court before being rejected.
