A federal judge on Thursday ordered Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, to turn himself in by July 1 to begin serving a four-month prison term he was sentenced for failing to comply with a subpoena to testify before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Judge Carl J. Nichols, who has been presiding over the case, allowed Bannon to be released pending appeal after he was convicted of contempt of Congress in October 2022. But last month, Bannon lost his first trial when a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington found that his conviction for ignoring a House committee’s request to testify was valid.
Bannon’s legal team has vowed to ask the Court of Appeal to review the sentence, and Judge Nicholls said Bannon would have to begin serving his sentence within four weeks unless the Court of Appeal heard the case and issued its own ruling suspending the sentence.
Another former Trump aide is already serving a prison sentence for refusing to participate in a House committee’s wide-ranging investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
In March, Peter Navarro, a former trade adviser to President Trump, was found guilty by a jury of contempt of Congress for ignoring one of the committee’s subpoenas and reported to a federal prison in Miami to begin serving a four-month sentence.
Bannon’s legal woes are likely to continue after and even while he serves his prison sentence.
Months after his conviction in Washington for contempt of Congress, state prosecutors in Manhattan accused Mr. Bannon of misusing funds he raised for a group that supported Mr. Trump’s border wall. In the final hours of his 2021 term, Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Bannon in a separate federal trial focused on similar charges.
Bannon’s fraud trial is scheduled to take place later this year in the same Manhattan courthouse where Trump was recently convicted of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 presidential bid.
