WASHINGTON — The last time Steve Bannon was a free man, Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
Early Tuesday, Bannon, the right-wing podcast host and former Donald Trump campaign official, was released from federal Bureau of Prisons custody, with exactly one week to go until voters choose between his former boss and Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Day.
Randilee Giamusso, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, confirmed that Bannon was released. He returned to hosting his "War Room" podcast later Tuesday morning.
"Nancy Pelosi sent me to federal prison as a political prisoner," Bannon said on his show, saying Democrats want "to tamp down the power of this show and to break me."
"Not only didn't it break me, it empowered me," he said.
Bannon told reporters later in the day that he'd spoken to Trump after his release. "We've had a chat," he said, refusing to divulge any details.
Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for defying subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 committee back in 2022, but he managed to stave off the imposition of the sentence for nearly two full years as he sought appeals. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — himself a Trump appointee — ordered Bannon in June to report to prison by July 1.
Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022 for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack spurred by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
“The defendant chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law,” a Justice Department prosecutor told jurors at trial, adding that Bannon “had contempt for Congress,” which was seeking to find out “why Jan. 6 happened and how to make sure it never happens again.”
Bannon hosts a podcast called "Bannon's War Room," which has a large following on the right and has frequently featured guests who downplay the Jan. 6 attack. He said before he began serving his sentence that he was "proud" to go to prison, and he told NBC News, falsely, that there was "no chance" Democrats could win the coming election unless "they’re stealing it."
On Tuesday, he urged his listeners to vote, saying "everything is coming to fruition."
"We have to put this beyond their ability to steal it," Bannon said. "We have to crush them at the ballot box."
Bannon, who encouraged Trump to declare victory on election night in 2020, was asked by NBC News whether he would do the same this time. He stopped short of saying Trump should declare victory but called on him to update voters about the state of the race earlier in the night than he did in 2020. Trump spoke around 2:30 a.m. four years ago and prematurely declared himself the winner.
"I'm urging President Trump, if the votes come in like it looks like they're going to come in, he should step up and inform the American citizens of exactly what's going on and not keep people in the dark, like was done in 2020," Bannon said.
Trump faces four criminal charges in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. He has pleaded not guilty. A federal grand jury indictment alleges that Trump knowingly used a campaign of "unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing" false claims about voter fraud to try to change the outcome of the election after he lost.
Bannon, a 70-year-old white male whose inmate number was 05635-509, served his time at FCI Danbury, a low-security federal correctional institution in Connecticut.
Just days after Bannon reported to prison, Biden announced his decision to drop out of the race, and Harris became the Democratic nominee.
Bannon had not served in the White House for years when he was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, but he still attempted to claim executive privilege to avoid it. At the eleventh hour before his contempt of Congress trial, Bannon said he would agree to testify to the committee, a move the Justice Department contended was a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability.” A jury ultimately convicted him, and the convictions were upheld on appeal.
Peter Navarro, a former White House official, was also convicted of contempt of Congress and served a four-month sentence, as well. He was released in the middle of the Republican National Convention in July and was greeted with a hero's welcome at the RNC.
