The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Monday cleared the way for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to dismiss a criminal case against Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon, in connection with the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
Bannon had been convicted in 2022 in two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over documents or testify before a Democratic-led House of Representatives panel investigating the Capitol riots.
In 2024, a lower court—the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit—upheld Bannon’s conviction, prompting his counsel to appeal to the Supreme Court.
However, when the SCOTUS in June 2024 denied Bannon’s request to keep him out of prison while his contempt of Congress case played out, he was forced to serve a four-month sentence at a low-security federal facility in Danbury, Connecticut.
The clearance from the SCOTUS now frees trial judges to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice”, as per an Associated Press report.
Given that Bannon has already served his four-month prison term, the possible dismissal of the conviction is seen as largely symbolic, rather than having a concrete aim.
The 72-year-old Republican had served as a key adviser to Trump in the latter’s 2016 presidential campaign, as well as his chief White House strategist in 2017 during Trump’s first term in office. However, the relationship between them eventually soured before it was later patched up.
Bannon was later said to be allegedly involved in the Capitol riots of 2021, in which Trump’s rioters tried to prevent the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump in the 2020 re-elections.
This is because the House Committee had claimed at the time that Bannon had spoken with Trump at least twice on the eve of the Capitol riots. It had also alleged that he had attended a planning meeting at a hotel in Washington, and had also said on his podcast then that “all hell is going to break loose”.
Trump in 2021 had pardoned Bannon after he was indicted on federal charges—some of which were also related to the border wall fundraising.
