Staunch Trump ally Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison Friday for contempt of Congress after he repeatedly fobbed off subpoenas to testify and provide documents to the House committee probing the Capitol riot.
However, D.C. federal court Judge Carl J. Nichols agreed to delay the sentence while Bannon appeals—as long as an appeal is “timely.”
Prosecutors had asked Nichols to toss Bannon in prison for six months for his “sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress” that “exacerbated” the assault on the Capitol.
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“The Defendant has expressed no remorse for his conduct and attacked others at every turn,” the feds wrote in a sentencing memo earlier this week.
Lawyers for Bannon, who claimed executive-privilege prevented him from complying with the subpoena, asked Nichols to sentence Bannon to probation only, and to allow him to remain free on bond pending an appeal. In a rambling argument on Friday, David Schoen, who also represented Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, argued that the Jan. 6 committee was overly political, that Bannon’s desire to respect executive-privilege was “the type of conduct we should be encouraging in this country,” and that zealous prosecutors were trying to “make Mr. Bannon their trophy.”
Nichols, however, said the Jan. 6 committee had “every right to investigate what happened that day,” calling the riot “undeniably serious.”
He ripped Bannon’s executive-privilege argument to shreds, noting that Trump waived the privilege earlier this year—but Bannon still failed to hand over a “single document.” Furthermore, some of the information sought in the subpoenas had “no conceivable claim of executive privilege,” he said.
Yet he did acknowledge that Bannon appeared to be following legal advice, rather than ignoring the subpoena entirely. And he questioned why the committee didn’t sue him to enforce its subpoena rather than seeking out a criminal contempt prosecution.
He sentenced Bannon to four months each for two counts of contempt, to be served concurrently, and fined him $6,500. If Bannon doesn’t appeal, he will have to surrender to prison by Nov. 15.
Speaking outside court after sentencing, Bannon’s attorney called their appeal “bulletproof.”
The former White House chief strategist and one-time Goldman Sachs investment banker, who has turned to podcasting as he fights legal battles on numerous fronts, had promised that his D.C. trial would be a fiery affair that would embarrass the government. In the end, his attorneys called no witnesses, floated a grab-bag of unsuccessful defenses, and the trial ended with Bannon convicted by a jury in less than three hours.
Bannon said on Friday that he respected the judge and the sentence, calling it “an absolute and total lie” to say he felt he was above the law. He claimed he participated in various congressional probes related to Russian election interference “more than any person in the Trump administration.”
“The same process every time,” he said. “I had lawyers that were engaged, they worked through the issues of privilege and at that time I went and testified.”
He was drowned out by people in the crowd shouting “traitor” and “fascist.”
A Bannon spokesperson didn’t immediately return The Daily Beast‘s request for comment on Friday morning.
