By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — , a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, on Monday won a 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 Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by on the U.S. Capitol.
The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice.”
The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of in 2022. A federal appeals court in Washington had upheld the conviction.
The justices also issued a similar order in the case of former Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who was pardoned by Trump last year.
Sittenfeld had in federal prison after of bribery and attempted extortion in 2022. The high court order allows a lower court to consider dismissing his indictment.
The Justice Department brought the case against Bannon during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency, but it changed course after Trump took office again last year.
Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by . But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Trump had in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to .
Bannon separately has 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.
