Supreme Court clears path for Trump’s DOJ to dismiss criminal case against Steve Bannon

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to drop the government’s criminal case against Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser convicted in 2022 of defying a subpoena from lawmakers investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The Supreme Court’s decision follows a move by federal prosecutors in February to drop the indictment brought during President Joe Biden’s administration. Both the Justice Department and Bannon had asked the high court to toss out an appeals court ruling upholding the conviction and send the case back to a trial court so that the original charges against him could be dismissed.

“This case should never have been brought, and we’re delighted that the decision affirming Mr. Bannon’s unlawful conviction has finally been vacated,” Bannon’s attorney, Michael Buschbacher, told CNN.

Bannon was convicted by a federal jury for refusing to comply with a subpoena for an interview and documents in the US House’s January 6, 2021, investigation. He already completed a four-month prison sentence for that in 2024.

The decision won’t have much of a practical consequence given that Bannon has already served his time, but Trump’s former aide has nevertheless continued to challenge his conviction.

Still a staunch Trump ally, Bannon argued in his appeal to the Supreme Court that he did not willfully ignore the House committee subpoena but was rather relying on advice from his attorneys to not respond to the subpoena until lawmakers worked out Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

His appeal turned on how lower courts define “willfully.”

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 attorneys told the Supreme Court. “That was a crucial flaw” in his trial, they said.

The Justice Department under Biden said that Bannon responded to the subpoena “with total noncompliance.”

But in an about face that tracks with Trump’s widespread pardoning of people involved with the January 6, 2021 riot, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that it was no longer pursuing the case.

“The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court.

In a 2024 decision, a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, said that its own precedents on congressional subpoenas foreclosed Bannon’s arguments. The fact that Bannon was operating on advice from his lawyers, the court said, was “no defense at all.”

Weeks later, the Supreme Court rejected similar arguments Bannon made in an emergency appeal in which he sought to avoid prison. The court’s brief order brushing aside the request meant that Bannon had to report for his sentence. There were no noted dissents at the time.

That order came months after another former Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, similarly failed to receive a break from the conservative high court.

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