A federal judge in Washington D.C. has ordered Steve Bannon to report to prison on July 1, revoking his bail after he lost an appeal of his contempt of Congress conviction related to January 6 testimony.
Bannon was sentenced in October to four months in prison and fined $6,500 for ignoring a subpoena to testify before Congress about the Capitol riot.
While Bannon claimed he acted on legal advice, an appeals court rejected that as “no defense.”
“I want to say one thing — I respect the judge, the sentence he came down with today is his decision. I’ve been totally respectful to this entire process on the legal side,” Bannon said.
His lawyers had argued he followed counsel that executive privilege prevented his compliance and the conflict needed to be resolved by courts.
“In America, we do not criminally prosecute, let alone convict and send to prison people who not only don’t believe their conduct to be wrongful or in violation of the law, but, as in this case, people who follow the advice of their lawyers who tell them that the law does not permit them to comply with a congressional subpoena when executive privilege has been invoked,” Bannon’s attorney David Schoen said previously.
The judge’s ruling enforces Bannon’s conviction for refusing to cooperate with the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attack.
