SCOTUS Hands Bannon a Huge Win for Jan. 6 Imprisonment

MAGA-world podcaster Steve Bannon has won a Supreme Court order that is expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction for refusing to testify to Congress.

Prodded by the Trump administration, the justices threw out an appellate ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice.”

The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022. A federal appeals court in Washington had upheld the conviction.

The justices also issued a similar order in the case of former Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who was pardoned by Trump last year.

Sittenfeld had served 16 months in federal prison after a jury convicted him of bribery and attempted extortion in 2022. The high court order allows a lower court to consider dismissing his indictment.

The Justice Department brought the case against Bannon during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency, but it changed course after Trump took office again last year.

Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by Trump’s claim of executive privilege. But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Trump had fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the Capitol riot.

Bannon separately has pleaded guilty in a New York state court to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail time. That conviction is unaffected by the Supreme Court action.

The unanimous Supreme Court order did not have any dissents.

It is unclear how long it might take to formally dismiss the case at the district court level. 

The order also comes as Trump, in his second term, has moved to unwind many of the investigations brought by the Justice Department under then-President Joe Biden — including the convictions brought in connection with the Capitol riot. 

Shortly after taking office last year, Trump issued a blanket pardon to more than 1,500 persons convicted or charged in connection with the Jan. 6 events. 

His administration has also terminated a growing list of FBI agents assigned to the Jan. 6 investigation, prompting a wave of wrongful termination lawsuits, including one filed as recently as last month.