Confirmed: Steve Bannon to Report to Federal Prison in Connecticut to Serve Four Month Sentence

The Tennessee Star Tuesday confirmed a CNN report which, citing anonymous sources, said that Steve Bannon, former Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump, will be ordered by a judge to report to Federal Correctional Institution Danbury in Danbury, Connecticut.

“Mr. Bannon has been initially designated to FCI Danbury, CT which is a low security male facility,” Sabrina Moore, an executive assistant and operations administrator for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) told The Star on Tuesday.

FCI Danbury is designated as a low security prison, which is one level of security higher than a minimum security prison. While FCI Danbury has a minimum security satellite camp consisting of 105 inmates, it appears from Moore’s response that Bannon will serve his four month sentence in the low security portion of the prison, which houses about 1,068 inmates.

“Minimum security institutions, also known as Federal Prison Camps (FPCs), have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing,” according to the BOP. “These institutions are work- and program-oriented.”

Low-security prisons are a bit more harsh.

“Low security Federal Correctional Institutions (FCIs) have double-fenced perimeters, mostly dormitory or cubicle housing, and strong work and program components,” according to the BOP. “The staff-to-inmate ratio in these institutions is higher than in minimum security facilities.”

The Associated Press reported on Friday that Bannon appealed his case to Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who is charged with handling emergency appeals from Washington, D.C. The chief justice, in turn, gave the Department of Justice until Wednesday to weigh in on the matter.

Bannon’s prison sentence stems from a 2022 conviction on contempt of Congress charges for ignoring a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.

Bannon has been ordered to report to prison on July 1 following a rejected appeal.

Because the principle of executive privilege was involved in Bannon’s case, his attorney said the only proper way to address the subpoena was to ignore it. As such, Bannon ignored the subpoena.

“In America, we do not criminally prosecute, let alone convict and send to prison people who not only don’t believe their conduct to be wrongful or in violation of the law, but, as in this case, people who follow the advice of their lawyers who tell them that the law does not permit them to comply with a congressional subpoena when Executive Privilege has been invoked,” Bannon’s lawyer David I. Schoen said in a statement after an appellate court upheld Bannon’s conviction in May. “President Trump expressly confirmed to the trial court in writing that he had indeed invoked Executive Privilege with respect to the subpoena Mr. Bannon received.”

The federal case against Bannon was ultimately overseen by the Department of Justice (DOJ), headed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Garland, who himself defied congressional subpoenas to turn over audio recordings between President Joe Biden and Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was overseeing a criminal investigation into the President’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, will not face criminal contempt of Congress charges himself.

Biden invoked executive privilege to keep the audio recordings secret.

“Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General,” the DOJ’s Department of Legislative Affairs said, explaining its decision not to prosecute Garland.

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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X/Twitter.
Photo “Steve Bannon” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.