Steve Bannon in Washington on June 6, 2024.
Getty Images via AFP
American right-wing populist ideologue Steve Bannon, former influential advisor to Donald Trump at the White House, must begin serving his four-month prison sentence no later than July 1, a federal judge ordered Thursday.
The sentence, handed down in October 2022, for obstructing the investigative powers of Congress due to Steve Bannon’s refusal to cooperate with the parliamentary investigation into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was confirmed on appeal on May 10, 2024 .
His application had been suspended due to an appeal by the defense, but Judge Carl Nichols lifted this suspension at the request of the prosecution and ordered that the defendant, aged 70, report to prison on 1er July at the latest.
“Nothing will silence me”
“Nothing will silence me,” Steve Bannon reacted as he left the court, predicting “a tidal wave” for the Republicans in the presidential and legislative elections on November 5.
Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate, deplored on his Truth Social network a “total American tragedy”, once again accusing the administration of his Democratic successor Joe Biden of “instrumentalizing” justice against its opponents.
Another former adviser to Donald Trump at the White House, Peter Navarro, also sentenced to 4 months in prison for the same facts, began serving his sentence in March 2024.
On January 6, 2021, Steve Bannon spoke on the phone with Donald Trump. That day, hundreds of supporters of the outgoing president stormed the Capitol, seat of the US Congress, in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.
Donald Trump was not directly concerned by the courts for the assault on the Capitol, although the parliamentary commission of inquiry into January 6, 2021 recommended, in December 2022, criminal proceedings against him, in particular for calling for rebellion and conspiracy against American institutions.
Two other trials
He was nevertheless indicted in August 2023 by a federal court in Washington and then by the courts of the state of Georgia (southeast) for his allegedly illicit attempts to obtain the reversal of the results of the 2020 election. None A final date has not yet been set for these two trials.
It was in the final months of Donald Trump’s victorious campaign in 2016 that Steve Bannon began to make his mark, denouncing a world order controlled by political and financial elites.
He followed him to the White House in 2017, but was forced to leave the Executive in August of the same year after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia (east), where a gathering of radical right activists was held. . A young woman was killed after a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove his car into a group of anti-racist demonstrators.
(AFP)
