Steve Bannon has already done the time, but the Justice Department now wants his conviction wiped off the books. On Monday, the department asked a federal judge to throw out Bannon's 2022 contempt of Congress conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Politico reports. The two-count indictment, filed in 2021 after the Democratic-controlled House held him in contempt, led to a weeklong trial and a four-month prison sentence that Bannon served in 2024.
The subpoena focused on Bannon's contacts with organizers of the Jan. 6 rally and with President Trump, a longtime ally, as he tried to overturn the 2020 election. The new motion, signed by US Attorney Jeanine Pirro but not by any career prosecutors, asks US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, to dismiss the case entirely. If Nichols agrees, it would erase Bannon's conviction and effectively end his appeal pending at the Supreme Court. Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices in a brief filing that the government now believes dropping the case "is in the interests of justice" and urged them to vacate lower-court rulings upholding the conviction.
A law professor at the University of Michigan and a former US attorney said the move appears to be political because there's no reason to think an appellate court would overturn the conviction. "The Trump administration continues to use the Department of Justice to reward allies and punish critics," said Barbara McQuade. "It is a disgusting abuse of the rule of law." A dismissal of Bannon's case would void the conviction without the need for Trump to pardon him, USA Today points out. Trump already has pardoned Bannon once, while he was awaiting trial on fraud charges connected to a fundraising campaign for a border wall.
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