Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon departs the United States District Court House on the first day of jury selection in his trial for contempt of Congress, in Washington, DC, on July 18, 2022.
Former Donald Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon — who is currently issuing a call for a purge within the Justice Department and FBI should the former president win the 2024 election — has been scheduled to appear in federal court next week where he may learn whether he will be sent to prison now that his appeal to reverse two contempt of Congress convictions has been rejected.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, set the hearing for June 6, according to a paperless notice on the docket made Tuesday.
Prosecutors asked Nichols to lift a stay of Bannon's four-month sentence roughly two weeks ago after his appeal was rejected by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, as Law&Crime reported. The U.S. Attorney's Office asked Nichols to detain Bannon even if he attempted to advance his appellate arguments any further — a doomed prospect, they noted, given the many failed analogous appeals by Trump adviser Peter Navarro to unwind his conviction and sentence.
Bannon argued the court lacked authority to grant the government's request.
A remorseless Bannon was sentenced in October 2022 to four months in prison for his failure to comply with subpoenas from the now-defunct House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Investigators wished to probe Bannon's communications with Trump in 2021, long after Bannon had left the White House. More specifically, Congress wanted to question Bannon about his podcast commentary on Jan. 5, 2021 and to probe him about two brief phone calls he had with Trump on the day of the attack on the Capitol, according to White House diary entries and phone logs obtained by Congress via the National Archives.
Bannon, on Jan. 5, 2021, said on his podcast that "all hell is going to break loose tomorrow."
He added, "I'll tell you this: It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. It's going to be quite extraordinarily different and all I can say is strap in."
The "War Room" podcast host has managed to avoid serving his sentence as he appealed for over a year but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld his conviction on May 10, flatly rebuffing his advice of counsel defense. Bannon has long argued that he defied the Jan. 6 committee because his lawyer had raised concerns to him over executive privilege.
Federal prosecutors urged Nichols to lock Bannon up on May 14, as Law&Crime reported.
With his appeal rejected, there was "no longer a 'substantial question of law that is likely to result in a reversal or an order for a new trial,'" prosecutors argued. "Under these circumstances, the Court 'shall order' defendant 'be detained' […] so the stay of sentence must be lifted."
When the appeals court weighed in, judges told Bannon his stonewalling of the Jan. 6 subpoena was willful and that his attempts to manipulate the very meaning of the world "willfully" are to be ignored.
"Bannon insists that 'willfully' should be interpreted to require bad faith and argues that his noncompliance does not qualify because his lawyer advised him not to respond to the subpoena. This court, however, has squarely held that 'willfully' in Section 192 means only that the defendant deliberately and intentionally refused to comply with a congressional subpoena and that this exact 'advice of counsel' defense is no defense at all," the appeals court ruled.
An attorney for Bannon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.