Steve Bannon still isn’t in prison, but he’s a little closer

Steve Bannon, a free man, on February 24, 2024, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.Ron Sachs/Zuma

Steve Bannon’s odds of going to prison ticked up on Friday when DC’s Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal of his 2022 conviction for contempt of Congress. But more than 18 months after a federal district court judge sentenced the former Donald Trump adviser to four months behind bars for blowing off subpoenas from the House’s January 6 committee, Bannon has not yet exhausted his legal options. 

The “War Room” host can still ask the full bench of the DC Circuit to consider his appeal, or petition the Supreme Court. Those are long shots, but a DC Circuit panel said its ruling will not take effect until a week after any further appeals are resolved. That could buy Bannon some time. He also benefits from a ruling by US District Judge Carl Nichols, who, even as he handed Bannon a stiff sentence, agreed to postpone his prison term while Bannon appealed.

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro, by contrast, is serving a four-month sentence imposed in January by US District Court Judge Amit Mehta, after Mehta declined to let Navarro remain free while he appealed. 

Bannon’s continued freedom—much like the delays in Trump’s federal prosecutions caused by the Supreme Court and the rulings of an inept Trump-appointed judge in Florida—is a frustrating reminder that the justice system often functions slowly, or not at all, for rich and politically connected defendants. The Trump and Bannon prosecutions are linked, because Bannon is doubtless trying to stave off imprisonment in the hope that Trump, who pardoned him in another case in 2021, will do so again if reelected. The Washington Post reported that Bannon’s “vociferous support” for Trump’s election fraud lies helped secure the earlier pardon. 

But Bannon, like Trump, has additional legal problems, including some that no president can fix. He faces fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy charges in New York related to the same scheme—which involved raising private funds to build a wall along the US-Mexico border—for which federal prosecutors indicted him in 2020. That case is before Juan Merchan, the same judge overseeing Trump’s ongoing trial for falsifying financial records to hide his alleged payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels. 

Bannnon is also an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive criminal fraud and racketeering case against his former partner and patron, the far-right Chinese mogul Guo Wengui. But although federal prosecutors last month said Bannon was part of Guo’s alleged fraud scheme, sources told Mother Jones that he is unlikely to be charged. (Guo, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to stand trial starting on May 22.)  

Bannon has denied any wrongdoing, insisting, just like Trump, that he’s a victim of political persecution.