Because the wheels of justice turn exceedingly slow — and with a wobble — Steve Bannon is still a free man.
Back in July 2022, the former White House aide was convicted of two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena in its investigation of the Capitol riot. The day before the insurrection, Bannon declared that “all hell is going to break loose.” House investigators wanted to know what he knew, what he meant, and whether he was in communication with Donald Trump that day. But Bannon flatly refused to comply with the subpoena and then offered no defense at his trial. Although he was sentenced to four months in jail, Bannon remains free while he appeals. (His ex-attorneys are meanwhile suing Bannon for $480,000 in unpaid legal bills.)
This is not Bannon’s only legal problem, however.
Like his benefactor Trump, Bannon’s legal problems have only enhanced his clout.
Two years earlier, in 2020, Bannon was arrested on the yacht of a Chinese billionaire and charged with defrauding donors to a “We Build the Wall” project that had promised a privately funded but, alas, fictional border wall. He slipped out of those federal charges after he was pardoned by Trump. But he will go on trial in May after New York state took up the case, charging him with money laundering, criminal conspiracy and a “scheme to defraud” related to the alleged scam. (Bannon has pleaded not guilty.)
But in MAGA world, none of this matters. Like his benefactor Trump, Bannon’s legal problems have only enhanced his clout.
In 2022, Axios named him one of the GOP’s new kingmakers. His podcast, “The War Room” had become a go-to “audition stage” for Republican wannabes and “a gold mine” for grassroots fundraising. Other Republicans bend the knee out of sheer terror of Bannon’s wrath.
Bannon’s new ascendancy was on vivid display recently at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference. Trump was the main speaker, but Bannon “hosted the only party that mattered,” according to The New York Times.
And onstage, Bannon embodied the id of the American right in all of its ranting, bombastic, paranoid rage. “There is no longer a gathering storm,” he declared, echoing the slogan from the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. “The storm is here!”
Rumpled and bilious, Bannon painted an apocalyptic vision of a nation facing ruin and chaos unless Trump is re-elected. And he leaned heavily into the “big lie.”
Echoing Trump’s own claim that he is a “dissident” like Russia’s late Alexei Navalny, Bannon declared that Trump “gave us three years of peace and prosperity before he was hit with a Chinese bioweapon and they stole the 2020 election.” Then he pushed the lie a step further. Biden, he insisted, was “a usurper” in the White House.
“Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: You lost in 2020!” he shouted. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”
“Trump won!” he barked as the crowd chanted along with him. “Trump won!”
Later, Bannon introduced one of his regular “War Room” guests, Jack Posobiec (who has his own long and wooly history of conspiracymongering and far-right trolling). “Welcome to the end of democracy!” Posobiec told the CPAC crowd. “We’re here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here,” he said, raising his fist into the air. “That’s right, because all glory is not to government, all glory to God.”
This is every single day on his podcast, where he bullies and threatens Republicans he considers insufficiently radicalized or loyal.
CPAC was not an outlier. This is every single day on his podcast, where he bullies and threatens Republicans he considers insufficiently radicalized or loyal.








