On Thursday, a federal court ordered former senior Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon to surrender to prison by July 1 to begin completing his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Bannon, 70, was found guilty of contempt in July 2022 after refusing to testify before a congressional panel investigating Trump supporters’ January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
One of the masterminds of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, he was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022 but has stayed free while appealing his conviction.
A US federal appeals court maintained the conviction last month. During a court hearing Thursday, US District Judge Carl Nichols revoked his bail and ordered him to surrender to prison by July 1.
Following the judge’s decision, a defiant Bannon spoke to reporters outside the Washington courthouse, stating, “There’s nothing that can and will shut me up.”
“There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up,” he stated.
“We’re going to win on November 5th in an amazing landslide,” he said, referring to the date of the White House election, which is likely to be a rematch between Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden.
Another key Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, was found guilty 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 official to have served time in prison for conduct related to the Republican former president’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election results.
Bannon was the White House’s chief strategist for the first seven months of Trump’s presidency, until resigning due to disagreements with other top officials.
In 2020, he was charged with wire fraud and money laundering for diverting millions of dollars donated to the construction of a border wall with Mexico for personal use.
While others were found guilty in the plot, Trump granted Bannon a blanket pardon before leaving office in January 2021, resulting in the dismissal of all charges against him.
Trump was supposed to stand trial in Washington on March 4 on charges of plotting to overthrow the results of the 2020 election won by Biden, but his trial has been postponed until the US Supreme Court resolves on Trump’s assertion that as a former president, he is immune from prosecution.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump, 77, for the second time following the Capitol incident, charging him with encouraging an insurrection, but the Senate acquitted him.
AFP