Supreme Court clears path to wipe Bannon conviction

What happened

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the dismissal of Steve Bannon’s 2022 contempt of Congress conviction for defying a subpoena from the House’s Jan. 6 committee. After President Donald Trump returned to office, the Justice Department had asked the courts to dismiss the conviction of his longtime ally and former adviser “in the interests of justice.” Monday’s two-sentence ruling vacated a D.C. appellate court ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction and sent the case back to a lower court, with the expectation it will be tossed.

Who said what

Dismissing the case “would effectively wipe out” the conviction, The New York Times said, but it would “have little practical effect” since Bannon already served his four-month sentence. Trump’s Justice Department has “sought to undo a number of criminal cases” involving his allies, The Washington Post said. But it’s unlikely the Supreme Court acted “out of particular sympathy or ideological alignment” with Bannon, Stanford criminal law professor Robert Weisberg told the Post. “It’s simply saying as a kind of supervisory matter: let’s clean the court of cases the prosecution doesn’t want to pursue.”

What next?

Trump previously pardoned Bannon for criminal charges tied to defrauding donors to a charity, but Bannon “pleaded guilty in a New York state court” to similar charges, under a “deal that allowed him to avoid jail time,” The Associated Press said. “That conviction is unaffected by the Supreme Court action.”

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