‘Team of Felons’: Out of options, Steve Bannon reports to prison

UPDATE (July 1, 2024, 1:01 p.m. ET): Shortly after this post was published, Steve Bannon did, in fact, report to prison.

Two years ago this month, a jury in the nation’s capital found Steve Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress. In the 24 months that followed, the right-wing operative/podcaster explored every possible legal avenue in the hopes of avoiding incarceration.

But when the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute bid late last week, Bannon ran out of options. The Associated Press reported overnight:

Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon is scheduled to report to a federal prison in Connecticut on Monday to serve a four-month sentence on contempt charges for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack. A judge had allowed Bannon to stay free for nearly two years while he appealed, but ordered him to report to prison Monday after an appeals court panel upheld his contempt of Congress convictions.

It was way back in September 2021 when the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack first sent Bannon a subpoena. Even at the time, the seriousness was obvious: The podcaster was told that this was a legal summons — not a suggestion — and that failure to comply opened the door to meaningful legal consequences.

Bannon nevertheless refused to cooperate. The House then approved a resolution finding the GOP operative in contempt of Congress and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which indicted the former White House strategist. A jury later convicted Bannon — his lawyers struggled to present much of a defense — ultimately leading to his prison sentence, which was imposed by a Trump-appointed judge.

Congressional Republicans launched an 11th-hour bid to rescue him from legal accountability, but it proved inconsequential.

It’s against this backdrop that a recent memorable quote comes to mind. “With Lincoln, they had a team of rivals,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told USA Today in May. “With Trump, you have a team of felons.”

In fact, now seems like a good time to update the big list.

• Donald Trump was charged, convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.
• Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
• Trump’s former campaign vice chairman, Rick Gates, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
• Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was charged, convicted, and is reporting to prison today. (He was also charged in connection with a scheme to defraud, but escaped federal trial as a result of a Trump pardon. He’s also facing a related state trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges.)
• He’s also facing an upcoming trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges.)
• Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
• Trump’s former adviser and former campaign aide, Roger Stone, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
• Trump’s former adviser and former White House aide Peter Navarro, was charged, convicted, and is currently in prison.
• Trump’s former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
• The Trump Organization’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
• Trump’s former White House national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was charged and convicted.
• Though he was later acquitted at trial, Trump’s former inaugural committee chair, Tom Barrack, was charged with illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of a foreign government. (Elliot Broidy was the vice chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, and he found himself at the center of multiple controversies, and also pled guilty to federal charges related to illegal lobbying.)
• Two lawyers associated with Trump’s post-defeat efforts, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have pleaded guilty to election-related crimes.

And did I mention that former president’s business was itself found guilty of tax fraud? Because it was.

This does not include the fact that a jury held Trump liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. It also doesn’t include the fake electors who’ve been charged in jurisdictions across the country, or the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” lawyer, who was recently indicted on election-related crimes.

To be sure, some of the aforementioned men were ultimately pardoned by Trump, who doled out pardons as if they were party favors before exiting the Oval Office, but this doesn’t change the scope of the broader picture.

The number of people in the Republican’s orbit who’ve been convicted of crimes in recent years is so great, The Washington Post once described it as the “remarkable universe of criminality” surrounding the former president.

That was five years ago. It’s even more remarkable now.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.