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US Supreme Court paves way for dismissal of Steve Bannon conviction

Kayla Epstein
Bloomberg via Getty Images Steve Bannon speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He wears a black shirt and stands at a glass podium.Bloomberg via Getty Images

The US Supreme Court has paved the way for Steve Bannon's contempt of Congress conviction to be thrown out, sending the case back to a lower court where it is likely to be dismissed.

Bannon, one of Trump's most prominent backers, was convicted in 2022 for refusing to respond to lawmakers' subpoenas for information about the January 2021 Capitol riot.

The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to dismiss Bannon's case in "the interests of justice".

Bannon has already served prison time in the case - a four-month sentence at a low-security federal facility in Connecticut - rendering any potential dismissal a more symbolic gesture.

An appeals court upheld the jury's verdict in Bannon's 2022 case, but the Supreme Court decision on Monday negates that ruling, and sends it back to a lower federal court in Washington DC.

The brief unsigned order from the Supreme Court cited "the pending motion to dismiss the indictment".

Bannon has spent the last decade in and around Trump's political circles. He is often credited as a key architect of Trump's 2016 victory and served a tumultuous stint as a White House adviser in the president's first term.

Outside the White House, Bannon has served as one of Trump's biggest boosters on the right, and has backed the idea of Trump serving a third term as president - which is prohibited under the US Constitution.

President Joe Biden's administration prosecuted Bannon, and the Supreme Court previously declined to intervene in Bannon's resulting jail sentence.

Last year, the host of the influential War Room podcast asked the Supreme Court to take up his case again, after losing in the lower courts.

The Trump administration did not challenge Bannon's new attempt, and the government believed "that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice", US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his response.

The government has filed a motion to dismiss Bannon's case in the lower federal court, which will again take up the matter following the Supreme Court's instructions.