Prison Sentences Issued – Team MAGA In Crosshairs

A district court judge decided on Thursday that former Trump administration advisor Steve Bannon must turn himself in for his four-month prison term by July 1.

Former President Donald Trump’s appointee, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, overturned the previous stay on Bannon’s four-month prison sentence while he appealed his conviction. Nichols did, however, permit Bannon to start the appeals process on Thursday in regard to the judge’s decision to lift the halt on his punishment.

After a nearly 50-minute exchange between defense attorneys and a government lawyer, Nichols declared from the bench of the federal district courthouse in Washington, D.C., “My stay of Mr. Bannon’s obligation to self-surrender is revoked.”

Nichols continued, “I don’t think the original justification for my stay of Mr. Bannon’s sentence exists anymore.”

Bannon was talking with Evan Corcoran while standing in front of the courtroom’s observers and journalists before Thursday’s proceedings got underway. In the Florida criminal case against Trump, Corcoran is a crucial witness. The charges against Trump include inappropriately concealing sensitive materials after leaving the White House.

Nichols’s ruling follows the federal government’s request that the judge punish Bannon for dodging a subpoena from the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee, which resulted in a finding of contempt of Congress. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the criminal contempt conviction on May 10, prompting this request.

Originally sentenced in 2022, Nichols postponed Bannon’s jail term while Bannon challenged the ruling. Bannon is the host of the popular War Room podcast, which draws tens of thousands of Trump supporters.

The well-known podcast broadcaster intends to continue appealing the case to the Supreme Court and the whole D.C. Circuit bench. However, it is unlikely that Bannon would avoid going to jail before July 1 unless one of those courts intervenes to overturn Nichols’ ruling.

Bannon is the second former aide to President Trump in the White House to face significant prison time due to his defiance of the now-dissolved House committee. Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro is currently serving a four-month sentence in Miami for disobeying the panel’s subpoena. Nichols decided to revoke Bannon’s bail in part because the D.C. Circuit had rejected Navarro’s attempt to avoid going to jail.

The idea that Trump claimed to have used executive privilege to circumvent the congressional committee’s subpoenas was a major point of contention for the former advisers. However, the D.C. Circuit decided in both instances that they were unable to provide evidence proving Trump had used presidential privilege to defend them.

From outside the courthouse, David Schoen, Bannon’s attorney, said that Bannon’s prior attorney had told him that “you no longer have to comply with a subpoena when executive privilege has been invoked.”

From the bench, Nichols announced that a written ruling would follow. Bannon intends to appeal both Nichol’s decision to revoke his stay of sentence and the D.C. Circuit’s ruling sustaining the contempt conviction.

The idea that Bannon might not fully exhaust his appeal relief options prior to being sent to prison, considering the duration of the four-month term, was a central point of Schoen’s argument before the courtroom on Thursday.

Bannon faces immediate jail time in light of the fact that a New York jury last week found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying company records. Judge Juan Merchan has set a July 11 sentencing date of 10 a.m., just four days before Trump’s expected announcement as the Republican nominee for president at the Republican National Convention.