Steve Bannon Is Headed For The Big House
Never surrender ... until July 1.
(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Steve Bannon is going to jail because Joe Biden is terrified of MAGA.
Or maybe it’s because the putrefying podcaster was too stupid to figure out how to avoid answering Congress’s questions without getting himself indicted. Probably that one, TBQH.
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In 2022, Donald Trump’s former campaign advisor blew off a subpoena from the January 6 Select Committee, claiming that the former president had made a blanket assertion of executive privilege. This would have been ridiculous even if it were true, since Bannon got fired from the White House in 2017, and could thus not be covered by executive privilege. But in fact it was not true, although Bannon’s lawyer Robert Costello represented to Congress and the Justice Department that it was.
After his indictment, Bannon stood on the courthouse steps and promised to turn his trial into “the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.”
But it was all for nought. Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, refused to allow Bannon to assert an advice of counsel defense, blaming Costello for leading him down the garden path. In 1961, when faced with the case of a mobster named Peter Licavoli who defied a congressional subpoena, the DC Circuit ruled that “reliance upon advice of counsel is no defense to a charge of failing to answer a pertinent question.” And, although Judge Nichols expressed skepticism about the decades-old precedent, he was still bound by it.
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The jury found Bannon guilty within a few hours, after which the podcaster stiffed Costello on the bill and wound up getting sued in New York state court.
Bannon appealed and requested a stay of his sentence, on the theory that the DC Circuit was likely to revisit Licavoli and reverse his conviction. Judge Nichols agreed, staying his four-month punishment pending appeal. But in the meantime, Peter Navarro, who was charged for the same crime and underlying conduct, was working his way through the DC federal courts as well.
Navarro, whose case was marginally more complicated than Bannon’s because he actually did work at the White House during the relevant period, was unceremoniously rebuffed by the DC Circuit — which hardly augured well for Bannon. And indeed the appellate court had no more interest in Bannon’s claim than it did in Navarro’s.
“This court, however, has squarely held that ‘willfully’ in Section 192 means only that the defendant deliberately and intentionally refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and that this exact ‘advice of counsel’ defense is no defense at all,” Judge Brad Garcia wrote for a the unanimous panel, citing Licavoli. “Because we have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm.”
On May 10, the Circuit Court issued an oddly worded order, “withhold[ing] issuance of the mandate herein until seven days after disposition of any timely petition for rehearing or petition for rehearing en banc.” Bannon argued that this divested the trial judge of jurisdiction until the Supreme Court weighed in. He did not, however, file any petition for rehearing en banc, much less an appeal to the Supreme Court — although he promises that he will eventually do both. He appeared to the think that the DC Circuit had granted him indefinite time to do so, but this turned out to be a costly mistake.
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“I do not believe that the original basis for my stay of Mr. Bannon’s sentence exists anymore,” Judge Nichols said from the bench this morning, according to Politico, noting the DC Circuit’s evident disinclination to revisit Licavoli.
After the hearing, he issued a minute order lifting the stay and ordering Bannon to self-surrender by July 1.
“We’re going to go all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to,” Bannon said outside the courthouse. “There’s not a prison built or jail built that will shut me up.”
Did Trump forget who put Judge Nichols on the bench?
Navarro is due to get out in mid-July, so it’s possible that the two will overlap at the federal facility in Miami where Navarro is currently a guest of the federal government. Well, it’s always good to have a friend on the inside to show you the ropes. Although considering what happened the last time these two geniuses teamed up … maybe not.
US v. Bannon [Circuit Docket, via Court Listener]
US v. Bannon [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
