A federal appeals court upheld the conviction of Steve Bannon, a former adviser to ex-President Trump, for defying a subpoena from the congressional panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The ruling brings Bannon a step closer to serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress, Reuters reports. Bannon was convicted in 2022 of two misdemeanor counts. Bannon, a key figure on the American right, argued on appeal that his lawyer advised him he did not have to comply with the subpoena and therefore he did not intend to commit a crime. Bannon's argument would "hamstring Congress's investigatory authority," by making it more difficult to prosecute witnesses who spurn congressional investigations, said a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The Democrat-led House panel investigated Trump's efforts to subvert the 2020 election results, which culminated on Jan. 6, 2021 when a mob of his supporters breached the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the vote. The committee sought information from Bannon, who predicted on a podcast the day before the riot that "all hell is going to break loose tomorrow." Bannon refused to cooperate with the committee's probe, which he attacked as politically motivated. Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro is serving a four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the same committee.