A Trump-appointed federal judge has denied the Department of Justice’s request to throw out Steve Bannon’s criminal conviction for refusing to testify before Congress about the Capitol riots.
Bannon served four months in prison after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022 for defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the violent attempt to overthrow Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. He later challenged his conviction before the Supreme Court.
In February, Trump’s ultra-loyalist U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, also filed a motion to vacate the indictment that led to Bannon’s conviction.
Judge Carl Nichols, however, rejected the motion on Wednesday, writing that Pirro had failed to explain why dismissal was in the public interest.
The appellate courts have ruled that prosecutors must submit “a statement of reasons and underlying factual basis” justifying the dismissal, and not just a “mere conclusory statement by the prosecutor” that dismissal is warranted.
Nichols noted that Pirro’s motion included just one “explanatory sentence” that read, “The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
“That is the kind of ‘conclusory statement by the prosecutor’ that the Court of Appeals has said is insufficient to justify” dismissal, he ruled.
The decision, however, left the door open for the government to file a renewed motion that complied with the law.
The Daily Beast has approached the DOJ for comment.
Bannon worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and served as chief strategist to the White House during the president’s first term.
The two men fell out in 2018, but Bannon has continued to cheerlead for Trump—including encouraging him to seek an illegal third term—and try to influence White House policy via his War Room podcast.
Besides being convicted of contempt of Congress, he pleaded guilty in 2025 in New York state court to defrauding donors who contributed to a $25 million private scheme to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
He also faced federal charges over the wall campaign but was pardoned by Trump in the final hours of the president’s first term.
