Days after being ordered to surrender by July 1 for a four-month prison sentence, longtime Trump adviser Stephen Bannon told Tucker Carlson: “In my 20s I served my country on a Navy destroyer, and in my 70s I’ll serve my country in a federal prison. It doesn’t make any difference to me. It won’t change my life in one way.” But apparently, it actually does matter to him, because last night he made a last-ditch attempt to stay out of the big house.
In an emergency motion filed Tuesday, Bannon, who was sentenced to time behind bars for contempt of Congress, asked a federal appeals court to let him remain free while he appeals his criminal conviction. Why does he think the court should grant him such a reprieve? Because he’s trying to help reelect Donald Trump, and also because he has a podcast that his listeners simply cannot be deprived of. “The government seeks to imprison Mr. Bannon for the four-month period leading up to the November election, when millions of Americans look to him for information on important campaign issues,” attorney Trent McCotter wrote in the filing. “This would also effectively bar Mr. Bannon from serving as a meaningful advisor in the ongoing national campaign.”
Bannon hosts a show called War Room, where, among other things, he has called for beheading top government officials and famously told listeners, on January 5, 2021, “We’re on the point of attack” and “All hell will break loose tomorrow.” In a text message to NBC News after a judge ordered him to surrender on July 1, he wrote: “Who says I’m reporting! WarRoom can not and will not be silenced.” He added that the show’s regular schedule would continue, saying: “4 hours a day 5 days a week and two on Saturday.… The WarRoom is a military command center for MAGA—can’t stop and won’t until we achieve final victory.”
Bannon was actually sentenced to prison all the way back in 2022, but was allowed to remain free pending appeal of his conviction; last month, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court upheld his guilty conviction. Following that ruling, Judge Carl Nichols said the Trump adviser could no longer delay his time behind bars. In the emergency motion filed yesterday, Bannon asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overrule Nichols’s order. His lawyers have argued that he should not have to go to prison until all of his avenues for appealing his conviction—including the Supreme Court—have been exhausted.
