The Supreme Court has sent back to a lower court, where a motion to dismiss is pending, the Democrats’ lawfare case against Steve Bannon, who was an adviser to President Donald Trump but refused to participate in ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s special congressional committee set up to try to blame Trump for the protest-turned-riot of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.
The decision was part of a list of orders released following the justices’ private conference.
Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena from Pelosi’s partisan House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
He then was convicted, as part of a long list of lawfare moves against Trump, his associates and his supporters, of violating a federal law that makes it a crime to “willfully” fail to respond to a congressional subpoena. He was sentenced to, and served, four months in prison, according to a report at ScotusBlog.
The sentence was affirmed by the left-leaning U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where judges who often have publicly opposed Trump “rejected his argument that his failure to comply with the subpoena was not ‘willful,’ as the statute requires, because he was acting at his attorney’s advice and not in bad faith,” the report said.
That ruling said following the advice of legal counsel “is no defense at all.”
His case arrived at the Supreme Court in October when he asked the justices to intervene.
The Trump administration then filed court papers urging the court to invalidate the D.C. Circuit’s ruling and send the case back to the lower courts, so that the district court could grant a motion to dismiss Bannon’s indictment.
The Supreme Court now has done just that.
A report from Reuters said Bannon’s conviction effectively was thrown out.
“Trump’s Justice Department, in urging the Supreme Court to toss the lower court’s decision, told the justices in court papers it has determined that dismissal of Bannon’s case ‘is in the interests of justice.’ The department had already filed a motion to dismiss the case at the trial court level,” the report said.
The Supreme Court in 2024 refused Bannon’s request to stay out of prison during his appeal, and he served four months.
Bannon’s lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, said, “It has been one battle after another for five years, but today the Supreme Court vacated an unjust conviction, and in doing so validated a fundamental rule—like oil and water, politics and prosecution don’t mix.”
The high court said in an unsigned order the case must go back to the lower court for consideration “in light of the pending motion to dismiss the indictment.”
Bannon, 72, served as a key adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and his chief White House strategist in 2017 during Trump’s first term in office before a falling out between them that was later patched up, the report explained.
Bannon, the report said, “helped articulate the ‘America First’ right-wing populism and stout opposition to immigration that has helped define Trump’s presidency. Bannon has played an instrumental role in right-wing media and has promoted right-wing causes and candidates in the United States and abroad.”
Pelosi’s scheme, which was partisan because she refused to let GOP-nominated members participate, ignored the legal principle that allows a president and his subordinates keep certain information private.
Democrats’ lawfare at the time included multiple cases against Trump, and a long list of wild and unsubstantiated allegations against his lawyers, his supporters and others, including a secret campaign to spy on the telephone records of multiple members of Congress.
