Steve Bannon begs Supreme Court to save him now that appeals court has refused prison sentence delay

Background: The Supreme Court on March 4, 2024. (Photo by Annabelle Gordon/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images). Inset: Steve Bannon, host of War Room, closes out the final day of CPAC on February 24, 2024. (Photo by Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via AP).

Steve Bannon on Friday formally filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking justices to keep him out of prison after an appeals court in Washington, D.C., denied the right-wing conspiracy theorist’s bid to stall the start of his July 1 prison sentence for his criminal contempt of Congress conviction.

The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was 2-1 with U.S. Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Bradley Garcia rejecting Bannon’s request to delay his prison sentence on appeal. Former President Donald Trump’s nominee, U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, dissented. Pillard was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama; Garcia was nominated by President Joe Biden.

With their ruling, Bannon’s only hope of stopping his imminent fate is intervention by the Supreme Court.

In its ruling, the appeals court explained that nothing in Bannon’s recent emergency request would “warrant a departure from the general rule that a defendant ‘shall … be detained’ following conviction and imposition of a sentence of imprisonment.”

The “requirements” to win the appeals court over were not met, namely, his failure to raise any new “substantial question of law or fact” that would likely result in a reversal of his conviction or demand a new trial.

“Our unanimous panel opinion explains why no such close question is present here,” the five-page unsigned order states , closely echoing what federal prosecutors recently posited.

Bannon was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress because of his willful noncompliance with a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has argued at length and unsuccessfully that the government has incorrectly interpreted the meaning of the word “willfully.” He contends his noncompliance was unintentional and further, that advice he received against complying with Jan. 6 committee was given to him by his attorney, Robert Costello.

“Bannon’s proposal — that to prove willful default the government must establish that the witness knew his conduct was unlawful — cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s approach to the statute,” Thursday’s order states. “If an assertion of good-faith reliance on advice of counsel excused a witness’s wholesale noncompliance, even as it is plainly unavailable to a more cooperative witness who appears but refuses to answer certain questions, Congress’s power of inquiry would be ‘nulli[fied].'”

The majority also underlined that Bannon’s arguments fail to consider the “many meanings” of the word “willful” and how it acutely depends on the context in which it appears.

In his dissent, Judge Walker argued that the meaning and the interpretation of the word “willfully” was a “close question” and one that could potentially be decided differently with Supreme Court intervention.

Though Bannon was convicted by a jury nearly two years ago and then sentenced to spend four months in prison in October 2022, he has been out on bail ever since. It was not until June 6 that U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, finally lifted a stay and ordered Bannon report to prison by July 1.

As Law&Crime previously reported , Nichols found the initial reasons to delay Bannon’s sentence no longer applied once the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld his conviction.

Bannon has also argued that he is only being imprisoned now because the Justice Department is intent on keeping him quiet in an election year and seeks to stop his political activity.

Prosecutors have said that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Bannon’s role in political discourse is simply not a relevant factor,” prosecutors said .

On Friday, among arguments already largely argued and defeated, Bannon’s attorney urged: “There is no denying the fact that the government seeks to imprison Mr. Bannon for the four-month period immediately preceding the November presidential election. There is no reason for that outcome in a case that presents substantial legal issues.”

Despite this effort, Bannon is very likely whistling past his own graveyard. It is highly unlikely the Supreme Court will step in; they did not when the similarly-situated, charged and convicted Peter Navarro filed emergency requests hoping to stave off his sentence.

Navarro — whom Bannon worked with to push the “voter fraud” and “stolen election” conspiracy theory in 2020 — is currently serving out the last few weeks of his four-month prison sentence following his conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress.

As noted by CNN this week, when Bannon finally reports to prison, he is unlikely to be sent to a minimal-security facility since he is also facing criminal state charges in New York for his involvement in the alleged “We Build the Wall” scam.

He is slated to serve a sentence at a low-security facility in Danbury, Connecticut.

Read Bannon’s emergency motion here .

The post Steve Bannon begs Supreme Court to save him now that appeals court has refused prison sentence delay first appeared on Law & Crime .