Steve Bannon will be released from prison a week before the U.S. election, it has been revealed.
The conservative podcaster, and former White House aide, is currently serving a 120-day sentence in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt of Congress.
Bannon’s legal team has been trying to get permission for him to serve the remainder of his sentence from home, in Washington, D.C., but the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) denied the request.
Steve Bannon during an interview with The Associated Press on Aug. 19, 2018. The former Trump aide will be released a week before the U.S. election.
AP
When Will Steve Bannon Be Released?
Bannon is scheduled to be released from jail on October 29, his original release date, acting warden Derek Puzio wrote in a letter to Bannon’s lawyers.
“Mr. Bannon has insufficient time on his sentence to process a referral and secure approval for 10 days of home confinement placement,” he said in the letter seen by CNN. “The Regional Reentry Management Office overseeing your client’s release area advised their Residential Reentry Centers, which monitor home confinement placements, that they will not accept placements under 30 days,” Puzio added.
Bannon and his supporters, including his daughter, Maureen Bannon, have accused the prison system of political interference.
She has previously said the government is “deliberately stalling his release in order to prevent such a key voice in the MAGA movement from being behind the mic and out there and able to help secure an election for Donald J. Trump on Nov. 5.”
Why Is He in Prison?
Bannon was convicted in 2022 of defying a subpoena to testify in front of the January 6 House Select Committee, which led an investigation into the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The committee wanted to know about phone conversations it believed Bannon had with Trump on January 5, but Bannon argued he should not have to cooperate because of executive privilege – a legal concept that allows presidents to keep certain communications secret. He has denied the charges against him.
Bannon’s team carried out multiple attempts to get his sentence delayed, but he was ultimately unsuccessful and ordered to report to a low-security Federal Correctional Institution on July 1.
Is Bannon Still Working for Donald Trump?
Bannon was the chair of the conservative outlet Breitbart News before he joined Trump as an aide after the 2016 election – but he reportedly fell out of favor and ended up leaving the administration after less than a year.
However, Bannon has remained an ardent Trump supporter, especially on his War Rooms podcast, and he supported the former president’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
When the Department of Justice ordered Bannon to report to prison earlier this year, Trump called the decision a “Total and Complete American Tragedy.”
“The unAmerican Weaponization of our Law Enforcement has reached levels of Illegality never thought possible before,” the former president wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Newsweek has contacted teams for Trump and Bannon for comment via email outside of normal working hours.
