Former top Trump advisor Steve Bannon has been ordered by a federal judge to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Bannon, 70, was convicted in July 2022 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Despite being sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022, he remained free while appealing his conviction.
Last month, a US federal appeals court upheld the conviction. As a result, US District Judge Carl Nichols revoked Bannon’s bail and mandated his prison report date for July 1.
Following the judge’s order, a defiant Bannon addressed reporters outside the courthouse in Washington, declaring, “There’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up. There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up.” He also predicted a landslide victory for Trump in the upcoming election on November 5.
Another former Trump advisor, Peter Navarro, was also convicted of contempt of Congress and began serving a four-month sentence in a Florida prison in March. Navarro, 74, is the highest-ranking former Trump administration member to be jailed for actions related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Bannon served as Trump’s chief strategist for the first seven months of his term, leaving due to reported conflicts with other top staffers. In 2020, Bannon was charged with wire fraud and money laundering, accused of misusing funds from donors meant for building a border wall with Mexico. While others were convicted in the scheme, Trump pardoned Bannon before leaving office in January 2021, leading to the dismissal of those charges.
Trump, meanwhile, faces his own legal battles. He is set to go on trial for charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results, but the trial is on hold pending a Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution as a former president. Trump, 77, was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives after the Capitol riot, charged with inciting an insurrection, but was acquitted by the Senate.
