WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court removed a key hurdle Monday and set the stage for the Justice Department to toss out the charges against President Trump’s ally Steve Bannon for defying congressional subpoena demands in 2022.
Bannon already did jail time from July to October 2024 after being convicted of the contempt of Congress charges, but the Trump administration is seeking to toss the case nonetheless as a symbolic gesture.
In its order list on Monday, the high court agreed to vacate an appeals court ruling upholding the conviction against Bannon and kick the case back to a district court judge in DC.
The order to grant Bannon a writ of certiorari — send the case to the lower courts for review — did not list any dissents, which is typical for decisions of that nature.
Bannon, who now hosts the podcast “The War Room,” had been convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 for failing to adhere to subpoenas demanding testimony and documentation from him pertaining to the since-defunct House Select Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro faced a similar fate for his defiance of a subpoena by the since-defunct panel.
The Trump administration claimed it concluded “in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
Bannon’s legal team contended in court documents that the former White House adviser wasn’t willfully ignoring the House subpoena but, rather, following his attorney’s advice against complying until the courts worked through Trump’s claims of executive privilege.
“[Bannon] argued he should be allowed to explain his reliance on counsel’s advice and on executive privilege, but he was ‘precluded … from presenting such a defense at trial,’” his legal team told the Supreme Court. “That was a crucial flaw.”
A federal appeals court previously slapped down similar assertions that Bannon’s team made in a last-ditch effort to avoid jail time back in 2024. That court cited precedent, and the Supreme Court declined an emergency appeal from Bannon to get out of time behind bars.
Like Bannon, Navarro had raised executive privilege concerns and was shot down by the courts. Others, such as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and then-social media director Dan Scavino, also faced contempt of Congress votes.
But the Justice Department declined to bring contempt of Congress charges against either Meadows or Scavino during the Biden administration.
“The criminal contempt of Congress case against Steve Bannon never should have been brought. It was brought by the Biden Justice Department solely for political purposes,” Bannon’s attorney David Schoen said in a statement after the Supreme Court’s move on Monday.
“The prosecution undermined the constitutionally important principle of separation of powers once Executive Privilege was invoked by the President.”
