The Department of Justice is recommending a six-month prison sentence and $200,000 fine for Steven Bannon for defying a subpoena to appear before the House committee investigating the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The former Trump White House adviser was convicted of two counts of criminal contempt of Congress in July after ignoring the subpoena.
“For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment ― the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines’ range ― and fined $200,000 ― based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation,” federal prosecutors wrote in their court filing on Monday.
Prosecutors accused Bannon of unlawfully withholding documents and testimony in a purposeful attempt to undermine the House committee’s efforts to investigate the deadly attack.
Bannon claimed he was prevented from testifying because former President Donald Trump had asserted executive privilege, which federal prosecutors said would not apply to Bannon if Trump had done so.
“The Defendant was a private citizen who had not worked at the White House for years; the subpoena’s demands sought records and information wholly unrelated to the Defendant’s tenure there; and multiple categories of the subpoena were completely unrelated to communications with the former President,” prosecutors said.
When his trial date grew near, Bannon reversed course and said that Trump waived this right and that he was indeed free to cooperate. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves called this an unsuccessful, last-minute attempt to get his criminal prosecution dismissed.
“When his quid pro quo attempt failed, the Defendant made no further attempt at cooperation with the Committee — speaking volumes about his bad faith,” Graves said in the filing.
Bannon is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, which prosecutors noted is one year to the day after he was held in contempt by the House.
Attempts to reach Bannon’s attorneys for comment Monday were not immediately successful.
In addition to the contempt charges, Bannon faces separate criminal charges in New York related to the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall. In that case, he is accused of pocketing nearly $1 million of money donated toward the wall’s construction. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Trump pardoned Bannon of federal charges related to the fraud allegations immediately before leaving office. But because presidential pardons don’t apply to cases at the state level, prosecutors in New York were able to make their own case against him.
Bannon is just the latest former Trump associate to face possible time behind bars. In Trump’s final days in office, he granted dozens of pardons to some of his closest allies and key supporters who were convicted of wrongdoing.
Trump’s friend and confidant Roger Stone was pardoned after being sentenced to 40 months in prison for multiple felonies, including witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstructing the House investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
His former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was also pardoned after being sentenced to 7 1/2 years for eight convictions, including tax and bank fraud. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the U.S. and another of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump also pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who served two years for tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.
He also pardoned his former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and his lawyer Alex van der Zwaan. All three pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the course of the federal investigation into Russia’s influence in the 2016 election.
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen was notably not pardoned and was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes. Trump called Cohen a “rat” for cooperating with prosecutors.
Read the sentencing memo below: