Steve Bannon Ordered by Judge to Report to Prison on July 1

Steve Bannon, former aide to former President Donald Trump, was ordered by a federal judge to report to prison on July 1 after his attempts to delay his sentence failed.

Bannon was found in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the House of Representatives’ investigation of the January 6 insurrection. In May, federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to order Bannon to serve his four-month jail sentence after Bannon tried (and failed) to appeal.

On Thursday, Nichols agreed with the DOJ after a one-hour hearing. According to The Washington Post, he said:

I don’t believe that the original basis for my stay of Mr. Bannon’s sentence exists any longer. I no longer consider that his appeal raises substantial questions of law of a kind likely to reverse his conviction.

Bannon had been trying to delay his sentence, and was originally sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress back in late 2022, but had been able to push off his sentence using the appeals process. He was previously able to escape serving time when he received a last-minute pardon in 2021 from then-President Trump, this time when he was indicted for wire fraud related to funds meant for the border wall.

This story has been updated.