As former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro is fighting tooth and nail to get out of jail, Donald’s former White House chief strategist and right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon is losing his fight to stay out of jail, as new reporting confirms that Bannon just got one giant step closer to the big house on charges related to his refusal to comply with a Congressional subpoena during the January 6th House Select Committee investigation — funnily enough, the very same charge that Navarro’s in for.
According to new reporting from POLITICO, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Bannon’s criminal conviction for Contempt of Congress.
Bannon was sentenced to 4 months behind bars back in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury of his peers convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress. However, unlike Navarro, Bannon was able to postpone his jail time while he worked through the appeals process against his conviction, thanks to Trump-appointed Judge Nichols.
However, the right-wing podcaster’s luck quickly ran dry when the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a 20-page opinion, reading, “Because we have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm [the conviction].”
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As noted by POLITICO, the three-judge panel included Barack Obama appointee Cornelia Pillard, Trump appointee Justin Walker, and Joe Biden appointee Bradley Garcia. Bannon’s only remaining options are to appeal the decision up the chain to either the full 11-member bench of the appeals court or to the Supreme Court. Bannon’s attorneys did not make it immediately clear what his next steps would be. However, Navarro’s previous and almost identical case set the precedent when his appeal was rejected by the US Supreme Court.
The January 6th House Select Committee called on the former Trump White House chief strategist to testify and produce documentation related to his role in the plot to keep Donald Trump in office despite his loss in the 2020 presidential election — a scheme that ultimately culminated in the violent and deadly January 6th attack against the US Capitol.
Bannon was considered a crucial part of this investigation, as he was present at the “Command Center” set up in the Willard Hotel in D.C. where Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman worked diligently to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on January 6th, 2021.
Both Giuliani and Eastman have since been stripped of their law licenses and charged with multiple crimes related to those efforts.
Ex-President Donald Trump himself has been charged with multiple election crimes in both the District of Columbia and the state of Georgia.
Multiple other Trump allies have been charged, convicted, or pleaded guilty on charges related to the fake elector scheme across the states of Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan.
Read the full report from POLITICO here.
Featured image via screen capture
