The Daily Fuckup

A federal jury in Washington found Steve Bannon guilty on July 22, 2022, on two counts of contempt of Congress after he ignored a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. According to the Justice Department, one count covered his refusal to appear for a deposition and the other covered his refusal to produce documents.

The subpoena was issued on Sept. 23, 2021, and required Bannon to appear and provide records in October 2021. Prosecutors said he did not comply. The verdict followed a trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. At the time of the verdict, the Justice Department said Bannon was scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 21, 2022.

Bannon, 68, had been charged after the committee said he had information relevant to its inquiry into the events of Jan. 6, 2021. The case centered on whether he could simply disregard a congressional subpoena. The jury said no. The result gave the committee a legal win in a high-profile case built on a straightforward fact pattern: a subpoena, a refusal, and a conviction.

He was later sentenced on Oct. 21, 2022, to four months in prison and ordered to pay a $6,500 fine. That punishment came after the verdict and did not exist yet on the edition date of this story, but it closed the loop on the same contempt case. The final outcome made Bannon one of the most prominent Trump-aligned figures to take a contempt case from defiance to conviction to jail time.