Supreme Court sides with Steve Bannon in bid to dismiss Jan. 6 conviction
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared a path for Stephen K. Bannon’s effort, backed by the Justice Department, to dismiss his conviction for defying a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
In a brief, unsigned order Monday morning, the court vacated a judgment by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upholding Bannon’s conviction. The high court sent the case back to the appeals court for reconsideration in light of a motion to dismiss that the Justice Department filed two months ago.
Bannon, an influential right-wing podcaster and former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, spent four months in prison in 2024 after a jury found him guilty on two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress. Bannon had refused to respond to demands for testimony and documents by a House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, the jury found.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2024 upheld the convictions, and the full appeals court later declined to rehear the case. In October, Bannon appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court had previously denied his request to postpone his prison sentence pending his appeal.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, the Justice Department has sought to undo a number of criminal cases brought by prosecutors in prior administrations, employing sweeping orders as well as smaller-scale interventions. In one of his first acts in office, Trump issued a blanket pardon to more than 1,500 people who had been convicted or charged in connection with Jan. 6—a series of cases that had emerged from the largest investigation in the Justice Department’s history.
Trump has directed a purge of prosecutors and federal investigators who worked on those cases.
More akin to its intervention in the Bannon case, the department told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in September that it would no longer defend the conviction of Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser during his first administration, who served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. The department also recently agreed to give former national security adviser Michael Flynn a payout to settle claims that he was wrongfully prosecuted as part of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Bannon’s most recent petition to the Supreme Court argued that he was following the advice of his attorney in refusing to cooperate with the congressional subpoena. He also says he believed that records the committee sought were protected by executive privilege, a constitutional principle that shields the internal communications of presidents’ top aides.
The trial judge did not allow him to use those arguments as a defense in court.
This time, the Justice Department—which had prosecuted Bannon’s case under the Biden administration—is supporting his bid to reverse his convictions. In a February filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to reverse the appeals court ruling and send the case back to trial court for dismissal. Such an outcome “is in the interests of justice,” Sauer wrote.
The Justice Department has concurrently laid the groundwork for that dismissal in lower court.
Salvador Rizzo and Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report.
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