A federal appeals court has upheld Steve Bannon‘s conviction for defying a Jan. 6 House committee subpoena.
In a 20-page ruling Friday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed each of Bannon’s four challenges to his conviction as without merit. Judge Bradley Garcia wrote in the ruling:
He argues that the district court erroneously defined the mental state required for a contempt of Congress charge, that his conduct was affirmatively authorized by government officials, that the Select Committee’s subpoena was invalid to begin with, and that the trial court should not have quashed certain trial subpoenas that sought to develop evidence for his defense. As explained below, each challenge lacks merit.
Bannon, a Trump White House senior aide who has continued to spread election-denying conspiracy theories on his podcast, was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. He was sentenced to four months in prison, but his sentence has been suspended as his appeal proceeded.
Still, Bannon likely won’t be reporting to prison right away. He has seven days to ask the full D.C. Circuit to hear his appeal or take his case to the Supreme Court. Another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, was sentenced last year to four months in prison after similarly defying a subpoena by the Jan. 6 select committee. Navarro reported to prison in March, having repeatedly appealed his case to the Supreme Court to no avail.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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