Steve Bannon, the rightwing media host and ally of Donald Trump, appears likely to have his criminal conviction dismissed.
The US supreme court filed a short order on Monday that vacated a decrease court docket ruling that had upheld Bannon’s conviction and despatched the case again to the US court docket of appeals for the DC circuit for “further consideration in light of the pending motion to dismiss the indictment”. The Trump administration had moved to dismiss Bannon’s conviction.
Bannon served within the first Trump administration for lower than a yr as a chief strategist. He has since turn out to be a serious voice among the many “Make America great again” motion, largely by his War Room podcast.
He was convicted by a jury in DC federal court docket of two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to submit to a subpoena to testify earlier than the US House of Representatives committee that centered on the January 6 rebel. An appeals court docket later upheld his conviction and he spent four months in jail in 2024.
Bannon has argued he was following attorneys’ recommendation when he refused to testify. In his submitting to the supreme court docket, his attorneys argued there have been questions of separation of powers and the way government privilege performed into the congressional subpoena, although Bannon was not a part of the Trump administration throughout the 2021 Capitol riot. They additionally mentioned the courts claimed “willfully” not complying with the subpoena was the identical as “intentionally”.
“Fundamental separation of powers principles – which are essential to our constitutional framework – lead to one path forward,” Bannon’s attorneys wrote in a submitting to the supreme court docket.
In its submitting to the supreme court docket, the Trump administration, which is looking for to overturn his conviction, wrote: “The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
Because Bannon already served his sentence, overturning the conviction could be a symbolic victory.
In addition to these convictions, Bannon additionally pleaded guilty to fraud costs in New York state court docket associated to a marketing campaign to finance and construct a border wall. He was pardoned by Trump for these federal costs.
