By Kayode Sanni-Arewa
Former top Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon was ordered by a federal judge yesterday to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Bannon, 70, was convicted of contempt in July 2022 for defying a subpoena to testify before the congressional panel that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, reports AFP.
One of the masterminds behind Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, he was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022, but has remained free while appealing his conviction.
A US federal appeals court upheld the conviction last month. US District Judge Carl Nichols revoked his bail at a court hearing Thursday and ordered him to report to prison by July 1.
A defiant Bannon addressed reporters outside the Washington courthouse after the judge’s order, saying “there’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up.”
“There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up,” he said.
“We’re going to win on November 5th in an amazing landslide,” he added in a reference to the date of the White House election expected to be a rematch between Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden.
Another top Trump advisor, Peter Navarro, was also convicted of contempt of Congress and began serving a four-month sentence in a Florida prison in March.
Navarro, 74, is the highest-ranking former member of the Trump administration to spend time behind bars for actions stemming from the Republican former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Bannon served in the White House as chief strategist for the first seven months of Trump’s term, leaving reportedly due to conflicts with other top staffers.
In 2020, he was charged with wire fraud and money laundering for taking for personal use millions of dollars contributed by donors toward the construction of a border wall with Mexico.
While others were found guilty in the scheme, Trump issued a blanket pardon to Bannon before leaving office in January 2021, leading to the dismissal of the charges against him.
Trump was scheduled to go on trial in Washington on March 4 on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Biden, but his trial has been put on hold until the US Supreme Court rules on Trump’s claim that as a former president he is immune from prosecution.
Trump, 77, was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives after the Capitol riot — he was charged with inciting an insurrection — but was acquitted by the Senate.