WASHINGTON — Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon is asking the Supreme Court to keep him out of prison, where he is set to report on July 1, two years after his conviction on contempt of Congress charges.
Bannon filed an emergency application for continued release with the high court on Friday morning after a federal appeals court denied his request for release pending appeal of his convictions.
Bannon was convicted nearly two full years ago, in July 2022, and U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, sentenced him to four months in prison in October 2022. Earlier this month, Nichols ordered Bannon to report to prison on July 1, saying there was no continued basis for staying the sentence after a panel of appeals court judges upheld Bannon’s conviction in May.
On Thursday evening, a federal appeals court denied Bannon's bid to stay out of prison, leaving the Supreme Court as his last option.
Not long after he filed, the Supreme Court asked the Justice Department to submit a response to Bannon’s application by 4 p.m. on June 26.
The case originated after Bannon blew off the House Jan. 6 committee's subpoenas for testimony and records. Bannon had previously worked in the White House in 2017 but was long out of that position and working as a podcaster during the period the committee investigated — when Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and tried to stay in power. Trump's federal criminal case in connection with his efforts to stop the transfer of power is on hold while the Supreme Court decides if the former president is protected from prosecution by total immunity.
In their filing to the Supreme Court, Bannon's lawyers claimed that he "relied in good faith on his attorney's advice" not to respond to the Jan. 6 committee's subpoena. But prosecutors successfully argued in their sentencing memo in 2022, an executive privilege claim "could not possibly permit the Defendant’s total noncompliance; the Defendant was a private citizen who had not worked at the White House for years; the subpoena’s demands sought records and information wholly unrelated to the Defendant’s tenure there; and multiple categories of the subpoena were completely unrelated to communications with the former President."
At the time, Bannon was "publicizing and celebrating his defiance of the subpoena," prosecutors wrote, adding that Bannon had "leveraged his media platform to mock members of the Committee through offensive name calling, deride the Committee’s investigation through rhetoric that risks inspiring violence, and ridicule the criminal justice system through hyperbole."
Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who was also convicted on identical contempt of Congress charges, petitioned the Supreme Court earlier this year to allow him to remain free while he appealed his conviction. That appeal was rejected by Chief Justice John Roberts before being rejected by the full court.
