President Trump's Justice Department has asked a federal judge to throw out Steve Bannon's contempt of Congress conviction — the second time the department has moved to clear the former White House strategist over his refusal to testify to the House committee that investigated January 6.
The new motion, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, asks U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols — the same judge who presided over Bannon's trial — to dismiss the case under Rule 48(a). It is signed by Deputy Associate Attorney General Michael Weisbuch, and Bannon's own lawyers did not oppose it.
In its filing, the department says dismissal "is in the interests of justice" because the Executive Branch does not believe it is appropriate to pursue contempt of Congress charges against a former advisor to the President who refused a subpoena investigating the events of January 6, 2021 based on an asserted belief that he was protected by executive privilege. The department says it "harbors significant doubts" about the fairness of Bannon's trial, points to Trump's pardons and commutations of January 6 defendants, and says defending the conviction "is inconsistent with this Administration's enforcement priorities."
It is the administration's second attempt. A first motion filed in February offered only a one-sentence justification; the Supreme Court vacated the appeals court ruling that had upheld the conviction and sent the case back, and in August Judge Nichols denied the first motion without prejudice, holding that it failed to state its reasons and factual basis as the rules require. The new filing is the fuller version he invited. He has not yet ruled on it.
The background matters, because two separate cases are often mixed together. In the contempt case, a Washington jury convicted Bannon in July 2022 on two counts for defying the January 6 committee's subpoena; he was sentenced to four months and a $6,500 fine, and he served the four months in federal prison in 2024. That conviction was never pardoned — Trump's January 2021 pardon covered a different matter, the federal border-wall fundraising fraud case — which is exactly why the department is now asking a judge to dismiss the conviction instead.
For the public, the ruling will decide more than one man's record. It will set how far a president's advisers can go in defying Congress under a claim of executive privilege — and how much power Congress keeps to compel testimony, the tool every investigation depends on to hold the government to account.
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