By EFE
Jun 30, 2024, 10:11 PM EDT
Former White House adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, one of the most influential figures in the American far right, declared himself a “political prisoner” in an interview broadcast on Sunday, one day before he is due to serve a four-month sentence in prison.
“I am serving my country right now as a political prisoner,” he said in an interview on ABC, where he said his imprisonment would not serve to silence his “voice.”
He enters prison on July 1st
Trump’s former chief White House strategist vowed to continue with his plans to appeal his conviction and that he feels “good” about his imprisonment.
The former advisor must report to prison before tomorrow, Monday, July 1, to serve a four-month sentence, after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected his request to delay his entry while he appeals his sentence.
Bannon was convicted in 2022 for defying a parliamentary subpoena requiring him to appear before a committee investigating the 2021 assault on the Capitol, in which Trump supporters broke into the parliamentary headquarters to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the November elections.
The committee wanted Bannon to testify because it believed he had prior knowledge of the assault on the Capitol, which left five dead and nearly 140 officers injured.
“Tomorrow there is going to be a mess”
The day before the assault on the Capitol, Bannon spoke with Trump by phone and later participated in a far-right podcast in which he declared: “Tomorrow there is going to be a mess.”
Furthermore, in December 2020, Bannon, who continued to informally advise Trump, advised him to focus his efforts on January 6, the date on which the election results were to be certified, according to the book ‘Peril’ by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Bannon’s defense has argued that he could refuse to appear before the committee because Trump was exercising executive privilege, which allows the president of the country to withhold certain information from Congress.
The problem, however, is that Trump was no longer the president, but Biden, something that the far right, led by Bannon, is questioning, arguing without evidence that the 2020 elections were not legitimate.
Criminal charges in New York
Bannon also faces criminal charges in New York state court, where he is accused of deceiving donors who gave up to $25 million to the “We Build the Wall” initiative, linked to the Trump’s great promise to reinforce the border barrier with Mexico.
The far-right has pleaded not guilty to the charges of money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other crimes charged against him in that judicial process.
The former adviser worked on the campaign that brought Trump to the presidency in 2016 and was chief strategist in the White House from the time the tycoon assumed power in January 2017 until August of the same year.
He supported ultraconservative candidates
He lasted less than seven months in the White House, in part because his talk of dismantling the political class and destroying elites had little resonance in the Trump administration, which was soon filled with millionaires. He also clashed with Republicans in Congress over his opposition to cutting taxes for the wealthy.
After leaving the White House, Bannon returned for a few months to the far-right Breitbart News portal, which fervently supports Trump, and dedicated himself to supporting ultra-conservative candidates who challenged the Republican Party apparatus in primary processes.
Considered one of the prophets of the populist “alt-right,” Bannon has declared that his goal is to become “the global infrastructure for the global populist movement” and has supported numerous far-right and populist political movements around the world, especially in Europe.
Keep reading:
- Steve Bannon loses appeal and goes to prison for conviction on contempt of Congress charges
- Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser, sentenced to four months in prison
- Steve Bannon surrenders to New York prosecutors on fraud and conspiracy charges