A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected Stephen K. Bannon’s last-ditch bid to remain free as he exhausts his legal options to overturn his conviction for contempt of Congress, leaving little chance that he will be able to delay a four-month sentence set for next month begin.
Mr. Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, was convicted in 2022 after ignoring a congressional subpoena seeking information about his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, but he was allowed to remain free while serving a went through a lengthy appeal process. That ended this month when the judge overseeing his case ordered Mr. Bannon to report to prison on July 1 after a federal appeals court upheld his conviction in May.
The three-judge appeals panel that rejected Mr. Bannon’s emergency motion on Thursday was split 2-1, with Justice Justin R. Walker dissenting. Judge Walker noted that Mr. Bannon had petitioned the Supreme Court to review his case and wrote that he should remain free until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear his appeal.
Mr. Bannon’s lawyers have argued that his case involves important legal issues related to the separation of powers. At trial, they argued that Mr. Bannon acted on the advice of lawyers who advised him that he could disregard the subpoena under former President Donald J. Trump’s executive privilege. Mr. Bannon had briefly served as Mr. Trump’s top policy adviser in the White House but had left that position long before the attack on the Capitol.
In the order, the court wrote that Mr. Bannon’s appeal was unlikely to succeed because the justices would have to significantly change the law as written to conclude that he was violating Congress’s attempts to obtain his testimony , did not intentionally reject it.
“It provides no basis for concluding that a higher court is likely to upend the established understanding of ‘willful’ in the context of failure to comply with a clear duty to respond to congressional subpoenas,” the court wrote.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court repeatedly rejected a request from Peter Navarro, another close ally of Mr. Trump, to avoid an identical contempt ruling related to a Jan. 6 House committee subpoena. Mr. Navarro had sought to appeal his case on similar grounds to Mr. Bannon.
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2024-06-21 04:09:27
www.nytimes.com
