{"id":321,"date":"2026-08-27T16:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T16:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/?p=321"},"modified":"2026-08-27T16:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T16:36:06","slug":"judge-declines-to-dismiss-steve-bannons-criminal-contempt-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/?p=321","title":{"rendered":"Judge declines to dismiss Steve Bannon&#8217;s criminal contempt conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/syndication.abcaudio.com\/files\/2026-08-27\/Getty_SteveBannon_082726.jpg\" alt><figcaption>Steve Bannon speaks during Semafor World Economy 2026 on April 16, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis\/Getty Images for Semafor World Economy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>(WASHINGTON) &#8212; A federal judge in Washington, D.C., declined a request from the Justice Department to dismiss the\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">contempt of Congress conviction<\/span>\u00a0for Trump ally Steve Bannon, telling prosecutors in a ruling Wednesday that they will need to come back with a better explanation if they want to clear Bannon&#8217;s record.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed to the federal bench by President\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">Donald Trump<\/span>\u00a0in 2019, faulted prosecutors for failing to comply with local rules that requires them to explain their motivations for dismissing the indictment against Bannon.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Bannon, who served as Trump&#8217;s chief White House strategist during Trump&#8217;s first term, was\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">convicted in 2022<\/span>\u00a0on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He served four months in prison in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In February, the U.S. attorney&#8217;s office in Washington, under the leadership of Trump ally Jeanine Pirro, moved to dismiss Bannon&#8217;s indictment while he was seeking to appeal his conviction before the Supreme Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The Supreme Court in April\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">vacated the charges<\/span>\u00a0against Bannon and returned the case to a lower court for dismissal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Nichols&#8217; ruling Wednesday notes that his denial of the DOJ&#8217;s request for dismissal is &#8220;without prejudice,&#8221; meaning he will give prosecutors another shot to offer a fuller explanation for why the case against Bannon should be dismissed.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Bannon speaks during Semafor World Economy 2026 on April 16, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis\/Getty Images for Semafor World Economy) (WASHINGTON) &#8212; A federal judge in Washington, D.C., declined a request from the Justice Department to dismiss the\u00a0contempt of Congress conviction\u00a0for Trump ally Steve Bannon, telling prosecutors in a ruling Wednesday that they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcfj570am.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}