By Spencer S. Hsu, Shayna Jacobs, The Washington Post (c) 2024
Stephen K. Bannon was released from prison Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with a House investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The influential right-wing podcaster and longtime political adviser to Donald Trump had maintained a high profile before trying unsuccessfully to defer his sentence earlier this year, continuing to spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, bolstering conservative causes and proposing that state attorneys general and district attorneys prosecute Democrats. He picked up where he left off Tuesday, once again free to weigh in on political matters during the final week before Election Day.
“We’re going to deliver a knockout blow to your progressive insanity on 5 November, and then we’re going to secure the deal after that,” Bannon said on his “War Room” podcast hours after his early morning release. Bannon accused Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, House Democrats, former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and others of making false claims to steal, reverse or delegitimize Trump’s upcoming election win with Congress’s aid.
“Take out your number two pencil and write this down: This show has never been more powerful,” Bannon said. “The four months in federal prison, not only didn’t break me, it empowered me. I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I can see clearly, just like in 2016 and in 2020, exactly what went on here and what we have to do to defeat it.”
Bannon, 70, was found guilty of contempt of Congress in July 2022, becoming one of the closest people to Trump to be convicted of a crime related to the attack on the Capitol. He is the second person in the past half-century to be jailed for rebuffing a congressional subpoena, after former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Navarro claimed credit for devising a plan with Bannon that would keep President Joe Biden from taking office; he was convicted in September 2023 of contempt of Congress for similarly refusing to cooperate with the House Jan. 6 committee investigation and completed his sentence in July, appearing to a roaring reception at Trump’s Republican nominating convention in Milwaukee.
In a recent blockbuster legal briefing, special counsel Jack Smith highlighted Bannon’s role in Trump’s innermost circle of alleged 2020 post-election coconspirators that alleged Bannon, private lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others devised a plan to use fraudulent electors to delay the Congress’s Jan. 6, 2021, confirmation of Biden’s victory. The filing was part of Smith’s bid to convince a judge that Trump’s alleged actions to overturn the election were done in his personal capacity and thus were not immune from prosecution.
Five people died during or immediately after the violence on Jan. 6 at the Capitol, which injured 140 police officers, caused $3 million in damage and forced the evacuation of lawmakers.
“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon predicted in a Jan. 5, 2021, podcast after speaking with Trump, prosecutors alleged. Later that night, they said, Trump and Bannon spoke, and Trump soon issued a statement asserting that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”
On Tuesday, Bannon appeared at an afternoon news conference in Manhattan, saying that he has been in touch with Trump, advising him to make early public statements about voting tallies on Election Day, Nov. 5. However, Bannon stopped short of saying that he advised Trump to declare victory on election night.
“I am urging President Trump, if the votes come in like it looks like they’re going to come in, he should step up and inform the American citizens of exactly what’s going on and not keep people in the dark like it was done in 2020,” Bannon said. He added that he did not expect to be onstage at Trump’s remaining campaign rallies.
Bannon served his sentence at a low-security federal correctional institution with a minimum security satellite camp in Danbury, Connecticut, according to the Bureau of Prisons, after courts all the way up to the Supreme Court rejected his efforts to stay out from behind bars pending appeal.
Bannon has argued that he could not testify to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack because he was covered by executive privilege, the constitutional principle that shields the communications of presidents’ top aides from Congress. Bannon also has asserted that he was following legal advice, a defense the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has said was not available for his crime. Bannon is appealing his conviction.
Judges ruled that unlike two other top Trump aides whom the Justice Department declined to charge for failing to appear before the committee – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and communications chief Dan Scavino – neither Bannon nor Navarro received letters from a lawyer for the former president directing them not to respond to subpoenas from the committee by citing executive privilege.
To the contrary, although Trump suggested before the trial that Bannon was covered by executive privilege, an attorney for Trump at the time told Bannon’s lawyers the opposite.
The Trump White House attorney wrote that “we don’t believe there is … immunity from testimony for your client.”
The Supreme Court earlier this year declined to postpone Bannon’s sentence pending appeal, after lower courts said Bannon failed to raise substantial legal questions over his two-count conviction for “willfully” refusing to provide documents or testimony to a House committee.
Bannon’s lawyers have maintained that he eventually will be successful on appeal.
Bannon faces a separate criminal trial scheduled to begin Dec. 9 on New York state charges alleging he defrauded donors who contributed more than $15 million to a private effort to build the former president’s signature “wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump had granted Bannon a pardon in connection with the Justice Department making similar allegations in a federal case, but the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in September 2022 brought money laundering and conspiracy charges, accusing Bannon of deceiving donors in the “We Build the Wall” effort. Bannon has pleaded not guilty.