(LifeSiteNews) – In a rare break with historical precedent, the Department of Justice asked a federal judge on Monday to sentence former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon to six months in prison and a fine of $200,000 for contempt of Congress.
Bannon’s sentencing is scheduled for Friday, exactly a year after he was held in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by the Democrat-led House committee investigating the events of January 6. Bannon had pleaded not guilty.
The DOJ hadn’t prosecuted someone for contempt of Congress since 1983, though Congress has found several political figures, including Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS official Lois Lerner, in contempt in recent years.
“When Democrats Eric Holder and Lois Lerner defied congressional subpoenas, @DOJ did nothing,” remarked representative Andy Biggs on Twitter after the DOJ’s sentencing request. “The @DOJ has become politicized and is no longer serving justice in good faith.”
Prosecutors said that Bannon “flouted the Committee’s authority and ignored the subpoena’s demands” in a sentencing memorandum filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“To this day the Defendant has not produced a single document to the Committee or appeared for testimony,” they wrote, adding that Bannon deserves “severe punishment” for his actions.
The memo accused Bannon of “exacberat[ing]” the “assault” on the “rule of law upon which this country was built” by refusing to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena.
It further faulted Bannon for “resorting to name calling, mimicry, and menacing rhetoric aimed at the Committee’s investigation and its membership,” citing, for example, Bannon’s insult of Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson as “gutless,” and his ridicule of Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff as “shifty Schiff.”
Newsmax contributor and trial attorney Ameer Benno in November slammed the Committee’s subpoenas to “pressure the DOJ to prosecute” Bannon “a travesty of a sham.”
According to Bannon’s legal team, the deadlines for him to appear before the Jan. 6 Committee weren’t fixed, The New York Times reported. In pretrial rulings, Judge Carl J. Nichols barred the attorneys from pursuing other arguments, including that Bannon had been given legal advice to disregard the subpoena.
“Mr. Bannon has a full story for why he didn’t show up — his advice of counsel, the invocation of executive privilege, questions about its validity and so on,” Bannon lawyer David Schoen said. “All of these defenses and his story of the case have been barred by the court at the government’s request.”
Bannon has blasted the Jan. 6 Committee as a “show trial committee,” and in a July interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, he called for a proper investigation of the January 6 events, including any “intelligence failures” and FBI and DHS “involvement.”
He also criticized the fact that the existing committee had “no ranking member” or “minority counsel.”
Tucker had noted that the same day Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress, a man was released from jail, free on his own recognizance, after being charged with attempted assault in the second degree of a gubernatorial candidate.
Bannon resolved to hold firm in his defense of the Constitution despite the threat of jail time.
“If I go to jail, I go to jail,” “I will never back off,” he told Carlson. “I support Trump and the Constitution and I’m not backing off one inch. If I go to jail, so be it.”