Steve Bannon wins Supreme Court order likely to lead to dismissal of contempt of Congress conviction

Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, on Monday (April 6, 2026) won a Supreme Court order that is expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction for refusing to testify to Congress.

Prodded by the Trump administration, the justices threw out an appellate ruling upholding Mr. Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Mr. Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Mr. Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice.”

The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Mr. Bannon served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022. A federal appeals court in Washington had upheld the conviction.

The Justice Department brought the case against Mr. Bannon during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency, but it changed course after Mr. Trump took office again last year.

Mr. Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by Mr. Trump’s claim of executive privilege. But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Mr. Trump had fired Mr. Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Mr. Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the Capitol riot.

Mr. Bannon separately has pleaded guilty in a New York state court to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail time. That conviction is unaffected by the Supreme Court action.