Former top Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon was sentenced Friday to 4 months in jail for defying a subpoena from the congressional probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
A U.S. District judge also fined Bannon $6,500. But he ruled that Bannon is not going to need to serve the sentence until an expected appeal plays out.
Each the jail term and high quality got here in below the punishments advisable by federal prosecutors.
The proceeding makes Bannon one in all the highest-profile figures to be sentenced to jail on charges related to the revolt.
Prosecutors wanted the court to sentence Bannon to 6 months in jail — the highest end of the federal sentencing guidelines range — and the utmost high quality of $200,000.
A right-wing media figure and onetime close ally of former President Donald Trump, Bannon “consistently acted in bad faith” as he tried to impede the House select committee’s investigation, prosecutors argued.
Bannon had asked federal Judge Carl Nichols for a sentence of probation. His lawyers also argued that the court should delay any sentence imposed until an appeals court could hear the case.
But Nichols ruled in the course of the sentencing hearing that the criminal statute requires him to sentence Bannon to at the very least one month in jail.
The judge also agreed with prosecutors that Bannon has “not expressed remorse and has attacked the select committee at every turn.”
Bannon declined to talk on his own behalf when given the chance, telling the judge, “My lawyers have spoken for me, your honor.”
Bannon’s sentencing got here one yr to the day for the reason that House voted to carry him in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a House select committee’s subpoena for documents and testimony. Bannon was indicted in November on two criminal counts and convicted after a federal trial in July.
Bannon’s lawyer had argued the subpoena would violate Trump’s executive privilege, the presidential power to withhold certain information from the general public.
But Bannon reversed course days before his trial, saying he was willing to testify because Trump had agreed to waive his executive privilege claim.
Prosecutors called that a stunt. In a court filing Monday, they wrote that after Bannon’s gambit did not delay the trial, “he never made any further try and comply with the subpoena—continuing as much as at the present time.”
Attorneys for Bannon argued partially that Bannon should receive a lightweight sentence because he was merely following his lawyer’s advice when he defied the select committee’s subpoena.
“The facts of this case show that Mr. Bannon’s conduct was based on his good-faith reliance on his lawyer’s advice,” the defendant’s attorneys wrote in a court filing this week.
However the Justice Department prosecutors said Bannon “pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” from “the moment” he was served the subpoena.
“An individual could have shown no greater contempt than the Defendant did in his defiance of the Committee’s subpoena,” they told the court.
“The rioters who overran the Capitol on January 6 did not only attack a constructing—they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country was built and thru which it endures. By flouting the Select Committee’s subpoena and its authority, the Defendant exacerbated that assault,” their memo said.
That is developing news. Please check back for updates.
