STEVE Bannon, an ally of former US president Donald Trump, has been sentenced to four months behind bars for defying a subpoena from the committee looking into the January 6 riots at the Capitol building in Washington DC.
Bannon was convicted in July of two counts of contempt of US congress: One for refusing to sit for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents.
Prosecutors had asked the judge in his case to impose a hefty sentence of six months in jail, while Bannon’s lawyers argued their client deserved probation.
The statutes for contempt of congress each carry a minimum sentence of 30 days behind bars, but Bannon’s lawyers argued the judge could just sentence him to probation and not send him to jail.
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The house committee had sought Bannon’s testimony over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Bannon has yet to testify or provide any documents to the committee, prosecutors wrote.
They argued that Bannon, 68, deserved the longer sentence because he had pursued a “bad faith strategy” and his public statements disparaging the committee itself made it clear he wanted to undermine their effort to get to the bottom of the violent attack and keep anything like it from happening again.
The defence, meanwhile, said he was not acting in bad faith, but trying to avoid running afoul of executive privilege objections Trump had raised when Bannon was first served with a committee subpoena last year.
The one-time presidential adviser said he wanted to have a lawyer for Trump in the room, but the committee would not allow it.
Many other former White House aides have testified with only their own counsel.
Bannon had been sacked from the White House in 2017 and was a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president before the riot.
He also pointed out that he had offered to testify after Trump waived executive privilege. But that was after the contempt charges were filed, and prosecutors say Bannon would only agree to give the deposition if the case was dropped.
Prosecutors have pushed for the maximum fine, saying Bannon had refused to answer routine questions about his income and insisted he could pay whatever the judge imposed.
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