Trump’s DOJ throws out charges against Steve Bannon despite conviction and prison time

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice wants to throw out a contempt case against his former adviser Steve Bannon as the longtime far-right media figure continues to appeal his conviction.

Bannon already served a four-month prison sentence inside “Club Feb” for defying subpoenas to testify to a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack. He failed to convince several federal judges and the Supreme Court to let him stay out of jail while he appeals.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Monday signed a one-page motion asking a federal judge to toss his case altogether.

“The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” the filing says.

But the Trump administration — which continues to try to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack and undermine the findings of the prosecutors and committees surrounding it — now appears to be asking the Supreme Court to agree that the committee was “unlawfully composed” in the first place.

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Solicitor general D. John Sauer asked the justices Monday to answer whether Bannon is “entitled to relief from his contempt of Congress convictions based on an argument that the committee that subpoenaed him was unlawfully composed, when he did not raise such an argument to the committee itself.”

A federal grand jury found Bannon guilty of contempt in two instances, including refusing to sit for an interview with the committee, and then refusing to provide documents about his efforts supporting Trump’s campaign to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.

If District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, agrees with the government’s motion to dismiss the case, Bannon’s jury conviction could be erased and his appeal at the Supreme Court would likely end.

“Today the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court that Steve Bannon’s conviction arising from the J6 ‘Unselect’ Committee’s improper subpoena should be vacated,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Monday. “Under the leadership of Attorney General Bondi, this Department will continue to undo the prior administration’s weaponization of the justice system.”

The committee’s final report found that the Trump campaign supported a “multi-part conspiracy” to reverse his election loss while the president failed to stop a mob of his supporters from launching an assault inside the halls of Congress to do it by force.

Bannon was initially sentenced in October 2022 and his conviction was upheld on appeal in 2024.

Before reporting to a low-security prison in Danbury, Connecticut to begin his four-month prison sentence in 2024, Bannon called himself a “political prisoner.”

“I am proud to go to prison,” he said while still streaming to his War Room broadcast. “This is what it takes to stand up to tyranny.”

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Trump had previously pardoned Bannon in a separate case after he was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection with a fundraising scheme for a U.S-Mexico border wall, sparing him a federal trial.

Last year, he avoided prison time by pleading guilty to defrauding donors as part of a plea arrangement in New York on state-level money laundering and conspiracy charges in connection with the scheme.

On his Truth Social as Bannon was ordered to prison in connection with his contempt case, the president demanded the criminal prosecution of members of the January 6 committee.

He falsely claimed that they had “deleted and destroyed evidence” that remains publicly available.

“The unAmerican Weaponization of our Law Enforcement has reached levels of Illegality never thought possible before,” he wrote at the time. “INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE FOR ILLEGALLY DELETING AND DESTROYING ALL OF THEIR ‘FINDINGS!’”

Bannon was the second person within Trump’s inner circle to go to jail in connection with efforts to evade the committee’s subpoenas for its wide-ranging probe.

Former Trump aide Peter Navarro had similarly refused to comply with a subpoena and also served a four-month prison sentence after he was found in contempt of Congress.

The Justice Department dropped its defense of Navarro in that case, and a federal appeals court will decide whether his conviction can be overturned.