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The federal government wants a six-month prison sentence and a $200,000 fine for Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump ally who has been convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.
“For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment — the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines’ range — and fined $200,000 — based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo filed Monday.
“A person could have shown no greater contempt than the Defendant did in his defiance of the Committee’s subpoena,” the government added.
Bannon was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress in July after having been charged last November. The Jan. 6 committee called the conviction a “victory for the rule of law,” added that, “as prosecutor stated, Steve Bannon ‘chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law.’”
The committee last week played audio of Bannon discussing Trump’s plan to declare himself the winner of the 2020 election, regardless of the results. “What Trump’s gonna do, is he’s going to declare victory,” Bannon told a group of associates prior to the election. “That doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just going to say he’s the winner.”
The committee also played footage of Bannon saying on his podcast on Jan. 5 that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” and that “it’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen.”
Bannon is set to be sentenced on Friday.
