In response to Steve Bannon’s conviction on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, the Justice Department requests that a federal judge sentence him to six months in jail and impose a $200,000 fine.
“From the moment that the Defendant, Stephen K. Bannon, accepted service of a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, he has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt,” prosecutors said Monday. “The Committee sought documents and testimony from the Defendant relevant to a matter of national importance: the circumstances that led to a violent attack on the Capitol and disruption of the peaceful transfer of power. In response, the Defendant flouted the Committee’s authority and ignored the subpoena’s demands.”
The statement continued, “For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months imprisonment—the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines range—and fined $200,000—based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation.”
The House Select Committee looking into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 issued a subpoena to Bannon, who was later discovered to have disobeyed it.
The January 6 panel summoned him in September 2021 for testimony and records.
Federal judge Carl Nichols is scheduled to sentence Bannon on Friday at 9 a.m. in the D.C. courthouse. The sentencing memo that his attorneys will provide is due Monday before noon.
“From the time he was initially subpoenaed, the Defendant has shown that his true reasons for total noncompliance have nothing to do with his purported respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, or executive privilege, and everything to do with his personal disdain for the members of Congress sitting on the Committee and their effort to investigate the attack on our country’s peaceful transfer of power,” they say. “[Bannon’s] abject refusal to heed the Committee’s subpoena, under the circumstances with which this country is confronted, could not be more serious.”
According to prosecutors, Bannon’s last-minute declaration that he was willing to work with the Committee on the night of his trial was simply an effort “to leverage the information he had unlawfully withheld from the Committee to engineer dismissal of his criminal prosecution.”
“When his quid pro quo attempt failed, the Defendant made no further attempt at cooperation with the Committee — speaking volumes about his bad faith,” prosecutors said.
They also argue Bannon “exploited his notoriety — through courthouse press conferences and his War Room podcast — to display to the public the source of his bad-faith refusal to comply with the Committee’s subpoena: a total disregard for government processes and the law” and used “hyperbolic and sometimes violent rhetoric to disparage the Committee’s investigation, personally attack the Committee’s members, and ridicule the criminal justice system.”
“[Bannon’s] statements prove that his contempt was not aimed at protecting executive privilege or the Constitution, rather it was aimed at undermining the Committee’s efforts to investigate a historic attack on the government,” the filing says.
Prosecutors claim that during an interview conducted as part of the court’s presentence investigation, Bannon gave a few details about his family, personal life, and health but withheld all information pertaining to his wealth. As opposed to that, they claim Bannon claimed: “that he is willing and able to pay any fine imposed, including the maximum fine on each count of conviction.”
Bannon again criticized the January 6 committee’s members for failing to attend as witnesses during his trial as he left the courthouse after being found guilty in July.
“I only have one disappointment, and that is the gutless members of that show-trial committee, that [January 6] committee, didn’t have the guts to come down here and testify,” Bannon said.
“We may have lost a battle here today, but we’re not going to lose this war,” he said. “[The jury] came to their conclusion about what was put on in that courtroom. But listen, in the closing argument, the prosecutor missed one very important phrase, right? ‘I stand with Trump and the Constitution, and I will never back off that, ever.'”
When asked if Bannon would appeal the decision, Bannon’s attorney David Schoen responded, “This is just Round One.”
