On Thursday (6), a US federal judge ordered former White House senior advisor during the Donald Trump administration, Steve Bannon, to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four-month prison sentence, local press reported.
Bannon, 70, was found guilty of contempt in July 2022 for disobeying a subpoena to testify in Congress before the committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.
Bannon, one of the masterminds of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022, but remained free during his appeal.
Last month, a second-tier federal court confirmed the ruling. District Judge Carl Nichols revoked his bail at a court hearing Thursday and ordered him to report to prison before July 1.
Bannon addressed reporters outside the Washington courtroom after the judge's order: “There is nothing that can silence me and nothing that will silence me (…) There is no brown jail or cell that will silence me. Shut up.” “.
He added, “We will win on November 5 with an overwhelming majority,” referring to the elections scheduled as a runoff between the Republican businessman and his Democratic rival, President Joe Biden.
Another Trump aide, Peter Navarro, was convicted on the same charges and began serving his four-month sentence in March in a Florida prison.
Navarro, 74 years old, is the first advisor close to Trump to serve time in prison for actions resulting from what happened during the 2020 elections, which Biden won.
After a successful 2016 campaign, Bannon was head of political strategy in the Trump White House for the first seven months of his administration, leaving the position due to alleged conflicts with other senior officials.
In 2020, he was charged with fraud and money laundering for diverting millions of dollars from donors intended to build a wall between the United States and Mexico for personal use.
Although others were convicted in the scheme, Trump granted a general pardon to Bannon before leaving office in January 2021, which led to the charges against him being dropped.
Trump was scheduled to stand trial in Washington on March 4, accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, but his trial was suspended until the Supreme Court ruled on the businessman’s claim that he enjoys immunity as a former president. .
(AFP)
