Steve Bannon, a prominent ally of Donald Trump and the former chief strategist of the White House, is about to find out if his appeal against his conviction for contempt of Congress will be granted.
After being found guilty on two counts of contempt related to his noncompliance with a congressional subpoena served on him by the House Select Committee looking into the January 6 attack, Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022.
On November 9, a court of appeals will hear oral arguments. While his guilty appeal is being processed, Bannon has not been imprisoned.
Bannon said he was unable to provide an explanation for his decision to elude the subpoena and filed an appeal against his conviction. Bannon’s attorney, David Schoen, informed the Court of Appeals that Bannon was informed by his former counsel, Robert Costello, that he was unable to waive the executive privilege that Trump had invoked on October 5, 2021, preventing Bannon from testifying or turning over documents.
The executive privilege argument was denied by the prosecution, who also pointed out that Bannon left the White House in 2017 and is now a private citizen. On November 12, 2021, he was indicted on the contempt counts.
Ten minutes will be allocated to each side to present their argument to the three judges on the appeals court.
“No matter where anyone stands on Mr. Bannon, everyone should hope the conviction gets reversed on appeal,” Schoen told Newsweek prior to the proceedings. It is a very dangerous proposition to hold someone criminally culpable and send them to prison without a finding that he or she ever acted in any way that he or she believed was against the law or wrong. That is what happened here.”
According to Schoen, during the trial, the prosecution “convinced” the court that Bannon’s noncompliance with a subpoena was sufficient for his conviction.
“They argued that it did not matter why he didn’t comply, but then they were permitted to tell the jury that he ignored the subpoena and did not comply because he thought he was ‘above the law.’ They knew that wasn’t true,” Schoen continued.
A lawyer who frequently opposes Trump, Mark Romano, expressed disapproval of the amount of time it has taken to decide Bannon’s appeal following his conviction by jury in July 2022.
Romano wrote on X, the former Twitter platform, “The ridiculously slow pace of the justice system is a reason so many people have rightly lost faith in it. Steve Bannon was convicted more than a year ago and they still haven’t heard oral arguments on his appeal. This is a simple case which should have been over long ago.”
After a jury pronounced him guilty in July of last year, Bannon told reporters that he would be filing an appeal and that “we may have lost a battle here today, but we’re not gonna lose this war.”
The District of Columbia’s U.S. Attorney, Matthew M. Graves, released a statement after the guilty conviction, stating that Stephen Bannon’s subpoena wasn’t able to be turned down or disregarded.
“Mr. Bannon had an obligation to appear before the House Select Committee to give testimony and provide documents. His refusal to do so was deliberate and now a jury has found that he must pay the consequences.”
In August, Bannon offered some sobering details regarding former President Donald Trump’s 3rd presidential campaign and the challenges he will face in 2024.
The former president would witness “nothing but a war” in the 2024 general election, according to Bannon, who also prophesied “political warfare” over the coming years during a section of his “War Room” podcast. Bannon was Trump’s top White House advisor at one point.
“Get Prepared, we got a fight ahead of us,” Bannon warned. “There’s still the primary, the RNC and the donors are gonna try and [block] Trump, so we gotta get through that. The general election and I don’t have to believe Biden will be the nominee, I think they’ll trade him out, but we’ve got nothing but a war in the general election. We’ve got six to eight years ahead of us of absolute political warfare.”
While many big donors did try to push Trump out by backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the primary is all but over with Trump the clear favorite and as of late destroying Joe Biden in the 2024 polls.
We covered a recent interview of Trump by Bannon.
Bannon, who now hosts one of the most popular political podcasts in the world called ‘War Room,’ had a one-on-one sit down with Donald Trump on Friday. In the exclusive televised podcast, Trump was allowed to say what he couldn’t on mainstream networks, specifically Fox News, which he noted in the interview as not being able to speak freely on due to the mainstream network’s censoring of the truth.
Much of what Trump has had to hold back in saying, was aired out in his candid interview with his former strategist and friend, Steve Bannon, in the nearly one hour live interview. A lot was learned in that candid time together.
Among the hot takes from Trump that’s he’s rarely, if ever shared before, is that he used tariffs to secure the border, Covid was used by the left to cheat the election, DeSantis is “losing badly,” we’re going to win the 2024 election and Make America Great Again, and perhaps most importantly, that he said that he could get Ukraine and Russia settled in 24 hours.
See the top clips of his comments below:
President Trump: “I could get Ukraine and Russia settled in 24 hours.” pic.twitter.com/CoCgyqFzln
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) April 29, 2023
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