Attorneys for Steve Bannon filed an emergency motion Tuesday in a bid to maintain the previous Trump White Home chief strategist out of jail as he seeks to attraction his conviction for flouting a subpoena from a congressional committee that probed the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Bannon’s counsel of document R. Trent McCotter submitted the submitting to the DC Circuit Court docket of Appeals requesting his consumer’s launch earlier than a July 1 deadline to surrender himself and serve a four-month sentence.
“If the panel determination stands, there will likely be far-reaching penalties, together with separation-of-powers considerations,” wrote McCotter and different attorneys from DC agency Boyden Grey PLLC representing Bannon, 70.
“Earlier than the prosecution of Mr. Bannon, it had been 50 years because the authorities satisfied a jury to convict somebody for not adequately responding to a congressional subpoena—and there has actually been no scarcity of disputes over congressional subpoenas throughout that point,” they mentioned.
Bannon’s protection group additionally claimed prosecutors “pursued a novel and aggressive concept of legal responsibility” and recommended they might attraction the choice to the US Supreme Court docket.
The legal professionals requested for a ruling from the DC appeals court docket by June 18.
Final month, a three-judge panel upheld Bannon’s July 2022 conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress for rejecting a subpoena to testify earlier than the Home Choose January sixth Committee.
DC US District Decide Carl Nichols on Thursday ordered the Trump ally to serve his jail sentence a little more than a week before his former boss will be sentenced after a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 counts of enterprise fraud for hiding proof of a hush cash cost to a porn star earlier than the 2016 election.
Former Trump White Home commerce adviser Peter Navarro filed a similar last-ditch motion to keep away from jail in March after he was additionally convicted of defying a subpoena from the January sixth choose committee.
Navarro, 74, surrendered himself at a federal jail in Miami days after the movement, telling reporters he would “proudly” serve a four-month sentence.
Trump and Bannon have had a tumultuous relationship — with the previous president having fired the strategist early in August 2017 — however the two later reconciled and each trumpeted allegations that the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump, 77, pardoned Bannon simply earlier than leaving workplace on Jan. 20, 2021, for federal fraud and cash laundering fees associated to a personal fundraiser his ex-chief strategist held, ostensibly to fund building of the US-Mexico border wall.
That case had been slated for trial in Could 2021.
Attorneys for Bannon didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
