Steve Bannon is days away from reporting to prison on Monday, July 1, unless the Supreme Court keeps him out while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction. On Wednesday, the Justice Department urged the high court to reject Bannon’s application.
In its opposition filing, the federal government cited the recent example of another Trump-world figure: Peter Navarro. Referring to the former White House adviser, the U.S. solicitor general reminded the justices that they “recently denied a similar application for release by another defendant who engaged in complete defiance of a subpoena issued by the same committee that subpoenaed applicant.” Both Bannon and Navarro were convicted for refusing to comply with the House Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena.
In Navarro’s case, Chief Justice John Roberts took the rare step of writing an opinion to explain why Navarro wasn’t allowed to remain free while he appealed. Navarro then tried his luck with another justice, Neil Gorsuch, who referred the matter to the full court, which rejected Navarro without further comment.
Bannon’s lawyers cited Roberts’ opinion rejecting Navarro as a reason to side with Bannon now. In his application to the chief justice, who oversees emergency filings from Washington courts, they wrote: “Your Honor issued an in-chambers decision — the first in many years issued by a Justice — to explain that the denial was only because of procedural concerns specific to Navarro’s case, which were ‘distinct from his pending appeal on the merits.’”
But the Justice Department says Bannon overlooks that the full court denied Navarro’s attempt without explanation. “The Court should likewise deny the application here,” it said. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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