A hearing during which the Department of Justice will ask that Steve Bannon be remanded to prison has been scheduled for June 6.
The notice of the hearing was filed on Tuesday.
In July 2022, Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt for not complying with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee.
The sentence was stayed pending the outcome of an appeal, which Bannon lost earlier this month.
“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. This court, however, has squarely held that ‘willfully’ in Section 192 means only that the defendant deliberately and intentionally refused to comply with a congressional subpoena and that this exact ‘advice of counsel’ defense is no defense at all,” the appeals court wrote in the ruling.
In response, federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to order Bannon to report to prison.
“Consequently, there is no longer a ‘substantial question of law that is likely to result in a reversal or an order for a new trial,’” the motion read, adding that Bannon has lost his appeal. “Under these circumstances, the Court ‘shall order’ defendant ‘be detained,’ so the stay of sentence must be lifted.”
The former Trump White House strategist and host of the “War Room” podcast has maintained that he resisted the subpoena because he believed that his conversations with former President Donald Trump were covered by executive privilege.
The committee had been looking to question Bannon about statements he made on his podcast on January 5 and about two short phone calls with Trump on January 6.
The day before January 6, Bannon had said on War Room that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
Bannon added, “I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different and all I can say is strap in.”
Supporters of the popular populist have argued that it was clear to anyone paying attention that there would be a large protest that day.
