Justice Department Issues Sentencing Recommendation for Bannon

On Oct. 17, the Justice Department recommended that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon be sentenced to six months in prison and fined $200,000 for defying a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Bannon received the subpoena on Sept. 23, 2021 and was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress on Nov. 12, 2021 for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s request for records and testimony.

In the sentencing memorandum, the Justice Department said that Bannon “pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” from the moment he was issued the subpoena. It also detailed Bannon’s attempts to evade the subpoena via unlawful executive privilege claims; his “public attacks” on select committee and the criminal justice system; and his last-minute “quid pro quo” attempt to leverage information he “unlawfully withheld from the select committee” to “enlist Congress to pressure the Justice Department” to dismiss his criminal prosecution. 

You can read the sentencing memorandum here or below: