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Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to Donald Trump, is due to be sentenced after being found guilty of criminal contempt of Congress.
Bannon faces a maximum of two years in jail after he was convicted of two counts of contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena issued to him by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
Bannon will now appear at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington D.C. on Friday, October 21, to be handed his sentence after a jury found him guilty of the charges in July.
Bannon is set to be sentenced by federal Judge Carl Nichols at 9 a.m.
While the Trump ally faces a maximum of one year in prison for each count he was found guilty of, he is likely to receive a shorter sentence.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) recommended that Bannon receive six months in prison, which the agency called the "top end" of sentencing guidelines.
On top of his custodial sentence for "sustained, bad-faith" contempt of Congress, the DoJ also recommended that Bannon receive a $200,000 fine based on his "insistence" on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office's routine pre-sentencing financial investigation.
"To this day, he continues to unlawfully withhold documents and testimony that stand to help the Committee's authorized investigation to get to the bottom of what led to January 6 and ascertain what steps must be taken to ensure that it never happens again. That cannot be tolerated," prosecutors wrote in their court filing.
"Respect for the rule of law is essential to the functioning of the United States government and to preserving the freedom and good order this country has enjoyed for more than two centuries. The Defendant's bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt deserves severe punishment."
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said Bannon is "unlikely" to receive the maximum two-year sentence on Friday.
"Federal judges usually stay within the sentencing guidelines, and they rarely run sentences for similar conduct consecutively," Rahmani told Newsweek.
"Because Bannon has no criminal history and was only convicted of misdemeanors, his advisory guideline range is zero to six months in prison. The government is recommending the high end of that range, or six months."
In separate filings on Monday, October 17, Bannon's defense team said he should receive probation instead to avoid a custodial sentence.
Bannon's lawyer, Evan Corcoran, argued the Trump ally was relying on advice from his former lawyer, Robert Costello, to dispute the subpoena using the defense of executive privilege, and should not be punished for doing so.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more