BREAKING: DC appellate panel upholds contempt of Congress conviction of Steve Bannon.Political commentator Steve Bannon’s appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. has been rejected, thereby upholding his conviction for contempt of Congress.
In July 2022, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist was convicted of two counts of contempt for not complying with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee probing the Capitol riot.
One Obama, one Biden, and the Trump judge who screwed up the 1512c2 decision in Fischer deciding: pic.twitter.com/jgqylyydg5
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 10, 2024
“I support Trump and the Constitution and if they want to put me in jail for that, so be it,” Bannon said at the time, per Axios. “I will tell the Jan. 6 staff right now, preserve your documents, because there’s going to be a real committee and this has to be backed by Republican grass-roots voters.”
In October 2022, Bannon was given a four-month prison sentence.
At the time, Judge Carl Nichols said Bannon had "yet to demonstrate that he has any intention to comply with the subpoena," appearing to agree with the Department of Justice (DOJ). However, Nichols agreed the criminal prosecution fell within Bannon's favor because the committee had not immediately attempted to enforce it, Daily Mail reported.
In his appeal, Bannon lodged four arguments against his conviction.
First, he claimed the district court’s definition of the mental state required for a contempt of Congress conviction was flawed. He also alleged that his actions were authorized by government officials, the select committee’s subpoena was invalid, and the trial court did not permit specific subpoenas that may have bolstered his defense.
“Each challenge lacks merit,” the appellate court found in its ruling.
The court concluded that precedented interpretation of the statute Bannon violated – which criminalizes “willfully” failing to respond to a congressional subpoena – rendered his “'advice of counsel’ defense [to be] no defense at all.”
The ruling cites the case Licavoli v. United States when discussing precedent that the court could not overturn.
"Bannon insists that 'willfully' should be interpreted to require bad faith and argues that his noncompliance does not qualify because his lawyer advised him not to respond to the subpoena," the court wrote.
“As both this court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly explained, a contrary rule would contravene the text of the contempt statute and hamstring Congress’s investigatory authority,” the ruling continued. “Because we have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm.”
In a statement released later on Friday, Bannon's lawyer, David Schoen, clarified that while the Appeals panel lacks the authority to overrule the decision issued in the Licavoli case, the full Court of Appeals can.
"There are many fundamentally important constitutional issues at stake in this case," Schoen wrote. "Today’s decision is wrong as a matter of law and it reflects a very dangerous view of the threshold for criminal liability for any defendant in our country and for future political abuses of the congressional hearing process."
"There are additional issues of constitutional dimension that were raised on appeal that we will also ask the En Banc Court to consider based on their direct conflict with other authority from this Court and the United States Supreme Court. That is the next step," he concluded at the end of his lengthy statement.
Trump’s former trade advisor Peter Navarro was similarly convicted of refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena in January.
He reported to prison in March after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his bid to remain out of prison pending appeal.
Late Friday morning, Bannon reposted a video clip from his account on the social media platform Gettr titled “Go F---Yourself We are Gonna Win!”
“You are not just the future, you’re the present,” Bannon says to a crowd in the clip. “If this country’s to be saved, it’s because of you. What is your task and your purpose? If it’s to wake up every day and to save the greatest nation, the most powerful nation on earth, this nation will be saved.”
In his repost, Bannon commented, “Fast Check: True.”
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article did not include quotes from Bannon's lawyer's statement or additional information regarding Licavoli cited in the appeals panel's ruling.
