Steve Bannon wins Supreme Court order likely to lead to dismissal of contempt of Congress conviction
Steve Bannon speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, in Dallas, Friday, March 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriela Passos)2026-04-06T13:42:55Z
WASHINGTON (AP) — data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/hub/steve-bannon">Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, on Monday won a data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court">Supreme Court order that is expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction for refusing to testify to Congress.
Prodded by the Trump administration, the justices threw out an appellate ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/congress-confirm-joe-biden-78104aea082995bbd7412a6e6cd13818">a mob of Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice.”
The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-steve-bannon-donald-trump-congress-government-and-politics-26c539434d968d642563b38c34a62916">contempt of Congress in 2022. A federal appeals court in Washington had upheld the conviction.
The justices also issued a similar order in the case of former Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who was pardoned by Trump last year.
Sittenfeld had data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/sittenfeld-cincinnati-corruption-charges-5dece2aa52d0635e79682487732211c2">served 16 months in federal prison after data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/cincinnati-political-action-committees-9c88df6131b0560cdcc7b9c19cf4771f">a jury convicted him of bribery and attempted extortion in 2022. The high court order allows a lower court to consider dismissing his indictment.
The Justice Department brought the case against Bannon during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency, but it changed course after Trump took office again last year.
Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-congress-subpoenas-capitol-siege-4eb9ffd1e94550219f5acab9e3d3b162">Trump’s claim of executive privilege. But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Trump had data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/fc13492d716b47769a0f81eaf8fc19fa">fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege">the Capitol riot.
Bannon separately has data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/steve-bannon-border-wall-fraud-case-plea-8978738ddd2eb578728f6ec16dbcc06e">pleaded guilty in a New York state court to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail time. That conviction is unaffected by the Supreme Court action.
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MARK SHERMAN Sherman has covered the Supreme Court for The Associated Press since 2006. His journalism career spans five decades. He is based in Washington, D.C., and previously lived in New York, Paris and Atlanta.
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Steve Bannon wins Supreme Court order likely to lead to dismissal of contempt of Congress conviction
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March 28, 2025, 04:09:11 AM