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Supreme Court clears way for Trump DOJ to wipe out Steve Bannon’s conviction
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on April 6 paved the way for the Trump administration to wipe out longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon’s contempt of Congress conviction.
At the request of the Department of Justice, the court effectively erased lower court rulings upholding the conviction and sent the case back to the district court, where the department has asked for the case to be dismissed.
Bannon, now a host of a popular MAGA podcast, was convicted in 2022 for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
Bannon has already served his four-month prison sentence, after the Supreme Court in 2024 rejected his bid to remain free while he appealed.
Related: Supreme Court says Trump ally Steve Bannon must begin prison sentence
But Bannon continued to dispute the conviction. And, after Donald Trump became president, the DOJ stopped defending it.
It’s not uncommon for the Supreme Court to drop a case when that happens.
The Trump administration told the Supreme Court “that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to senior staff Steve Bannon during a swearing in ceremony for senior staff at the White House in Washington, DC January 22, 2017.
Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bannon and other allies as politically motivated. He has pardoned approximately 1,600 people for charges related to the attack.
Trump has pardoned Steve Bannon before
At the end of his first term as president, Trump pardoned Bannon as he was awaiting trial in New York for a different case: fraud charges tied to a border wall fundraising effort. Bannon was one of four people accused in 2020 of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in the “We Build the Wall” GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to finance one of Trump’s signature goals.
In 2022, a jury found Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress because he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Bannon said he was relying on his lawyer’s advice not to respond to the subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol until another issue was resolved. Bannon believed Trump could protect him from testifying by invoking executive privilege, which allows presidents to keep some executive branch discussions confidential.
Because he was acting in good faith, Bannon argued, he did not cross the criminal line of “willfully” failing to respond.
Bannon also questioned the validity of the subpoena.
House lawyers argued that Bannon had thumbed his nose at the committee and ignored the subpoena.
Steve Bannon speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 20, 2025.
A ‘firestorm’
Lawmakers had sought to question Bannon, a political strategist for Trump who pushed him to aggressively embrace populism during the 2016 campaign, partly because he told associates from China on Oct. 31, 2020, that Trump would falsely declare victory even if he lost the election and said it would be a “firestorm.”
In his podcast, Bannon said former Vice President Mike Pence “spit the bit,” which meant he was no longer supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The committee described the comment as amplifying the pressure on Pence.
Bannon called Trump at least twice on Jan. 5, 2021, and predicted on a right-wing talk radio show that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court clears way for DOJ to erase Steve Bannon’s conviction