Former Trump strategist to turn himself in to police to serve sentence

Steve Bannon, former White House strategist during the presidency of Donald Trump (Republicans), will report to federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, this Monday (July 1, 2024), to serve a sentence four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. The conviction is for defying a subpoena related to the investigation into the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

By coming forward, he will become the second former Trump aide to be jailed for a contempt of Congress conviction, following Peter Navarro, who began his 4-month sentence in early 2024. The information is from Associated Press.

The US Supreme Court, last Friday (June 28), rejected Bannon’s appeal to postpone his sentence. The political aide had argued that he was acting on the advice of his lawyers in not responding to the subpoena, pending the resolution of Trump’s claims of executive privilege. However, that defense was not allowed by the courts to be presented to the jury.

Bannon was then found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to testify before the House committee about the January 6 election and another for refusing to provide documents related to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

A His defense argues that the case raises important questions for the Supreme Court, including Bannon’s previous attorney’s belief that the subpoena was invalid because of executive privilege asserted by Trump.

Executive privilege, in the U.S. Constitution, means the right of the President of the United States and other members of the government to keep confidential communications under certain circumstances within the executive branch and to resist certain subpoenas and other oversight by the legislative and judicial branches.

Prosecutors, however, say Bannon had left the White House years earlier and that Trump never invoked executive privilege before the committee.

The political aide’s appeal will continue to be heard, and House Republican leaders have voiced their support for intervening to claim that the Jan. 6 committee was improperly created, effectively trying to deem the subpoena Bannon received illegitimate.