Steve Bannon, former advisor to Donald Trump in the White House and one of the most influential figures of the American extreme right, He declared himself a “political prisoner” in an interview broadcast this Sundayone day before having to enter prison to serve a four-month sentence.
“I am serving my country right now as a political prisoner”he stated in an interview on the ABC network, where he assured that his imprisonment will not serve to silence his “voice.”
Trump’s former chief White House strategist vowed to continue with his plans to appeal his conviction and that he feels “good” about his imprisonment.
The former advisor must report to prison before Monday to serve a four-month sentence after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected his request to delay his entry while he appeals his sentence.
Bannon was convicted in 2022 for defying a parliamentary subpoena which required him to appear before a committee investigating the 2021 assault on the Capitol, in which Trump supporters broke into the parliamentary headquarters to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the November elections.
The committee wanted Bannon to testify because it believed he had prior knowledge of the assault on the Capitol, which left five dead and nearly 140 officers injured.
The day before the assault on the Capitol, Bannon spoke with Trump by phone and later participated in a podcast of the extreme right in which he declared: “Tomorrow a mess is going to break out.”
In December 2020, Bannon, who was still informally advising Trump, also advised him to focus his efforts on January 6, the date on which the election results were due to be certified, according to the book ‘Peril’ by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Bannon’s defense has argued that he could refuse to appear before that committee because Trump was exercising executive privilege, which allows the president of the country to withhold certain information from Congress.
However, the problem is that Trump was no longer the president, but Biden, something that precisely the extreme right championed by Bannon questions, arguing without evidence that the 2020 elections were not legitimate.
Bannon also faces criminal charges in a New York state court, where he is accused of deceiving donors who contributed up to $25 million to the “We Build the Wall” initiative, linked to Trump’s great promise to strengthen the border barrier with Mexico.
The far-right has pleaded not guilty to the charges of money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other crimes charged against him in that judicial process.
The former advisor worked on the campaign that brought Trump to the Presidency in 2016 and was chief strategist in the White House from the time the tycoon assumed power in January 2017 until August of the same year.
He lasted less than seven months in the White House due, in part, to the fact that his speech to dismantle the political class and put an end to the elites had little fit with the Trump Administration, which was soon filled with millionaires. He also clashed with congressional Republicans over his opposition to cutting taxes on the wealthy.
After leaving the White House, Bannon returned to the far-right Breitbart News website for a few monthswho fervently supports Trump, and dedicated himself to supporting ultra-conservative candidates who challenged the Republican Party apparatus in primary processes.
Considered one of the prophets of the populist “alt-right,” Bannon has stated that his goal is to become “the global infrastructure for the global populist movement” and has supported numerous far-right and populist political movements around the world, especially in Europe.
With information from EFE.
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