Steve Bannon is getting out of prison, just in time for Election Day.
As Trump ramps up violent rhetoric about weaponizing the Justice Department against judges, prosecutors and journalists while simultaneously utilizing the U.S. military against his perceived adversaries he calls “the enemy within,” his 2024 presidential campaign will soon have one of its loudest and fiercest surrogates back.
Bannon is due to be released from a suburban Connecticut prison, after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress, on Tuesday, Oct. 29.
Already, those around Bannon are foreshadowing his plans upon his release. He’s expected to renew his calls for a domestic “revolution” and a merciless campaign of “retribution” on MAGA critics as soon as he sits back down in front of the camera at his Washington, D.C., home, where for years, he has broadcast a daily video podcast called “War Room.”
“Expect to see a newly invigorated Stephen K. Bannon, more intent than ever to take his fight to the administrative state,” Raheem Kassam, a conservative British activist who serves as the editor in chief of The National Pulse and previously served as the London editor in chief of Breitbart News, told NOTUS. “I would not be surprised to see him immediately hitting the campaign trail, as well as hosting his ‘War Room’ show for four hours each day. Every second will count. Every word will matter.”
Kassam said he has “been in touch with Steve almost every day.”
Bannon’s employees and allies have occupied the “War Room” host’s chair in his absence during these last four months.
“Eleven days until Stephen K. Bannon is free,” fill-in host Natalie G. Winters said on the show last week. “But make no mistake, as I’m sure Stephen K. Bannon would definitely agree with me: The real countdown is not just when Stephen K. Bannon is let out of federal prison. The real countdown is until Jan. 20, when retribution — or as we call it here in the war room — justice, starts.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to several emails from NOTUS about what role, if any, Bannon could play in the weeks ahead.
The media personality hasn’t exactly languished in prison, according to several eyewitnesses behind bars.
In recent months, NOTUS has corresponded with Bannon’s fellow inmates at FCI Danbury. They describe him as something of a celebrity at the prison.
“He is treated just fine,” wrote Andre Calix, who is serving a 13-year term for bank robbery and weapons charges.
Like at most prisons, the 1,248 inmates at FCI Danbury tend to divide into racial, religious or geographic groups known as “cars.” New Yorkers stick together and separate from the Connecticut crew or those from Philadelphia. Muslim inmates have their own faction. The “Paisas” is a Mexican prison gang that has been on Border Patrol’s radar for years.
According to fellow inmates, Bannon has gravitated toward the “white car,” which includes mobsters serving time for fraud and similar racketeering-type behavior.
“Your boy (B) is in the white car, sits with the Italians, the godfather type,” said Fred Carrasco Jr., who is serving more than a decade behind bars for armed drug trafficking, noting that “he basically sticks to his crew [and] hangs out with one guy” who he describes as “pretty tough.”
The white inmates have their own table, and Bannon is a regular there now, he added.
The FCI, which is laid out in the spirit of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison, has a low-set, two-story concrete building that wraps around an interior field. Carrasco said Bannon “walks the track … like every day,” where he’s often approached by fellow inmates with “all kinds of questions.”
Some ask whether Trump actually cheated in the election. Others wonder about Trump’s ties to Russia. Carrasco said that Bannon has been questioned about “what sort of classified documents he has had the privilege to read” — and even fielded a question on whether “the government” killed President John F. Kennedy.
“It’s awesome the shit this guy knows,” Carrasco wrote.
Bannon has continued his political invective, railing against supposed shadow government powers — even as he’s been joined at FCI Danbury by four men who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“American politics indeed plays a role at this prison,” Calix wrote on Oct. 2. “I just happen to be speaking to Steve Bannon about this very topic yesterday and I asked him: Does he think Trump has been infected by the Deep State. The Deep State is real!”
But even Calix has his reservations about Trump’s politics, repeatedly referring to the threat of MAGA’s cult-like behavior.
“The Trump cult-ure has seeped into every facet of American life and this has dangerously destroyed the rule of law in the government,” he wrote.
Despite the relatively relaxed conditions at the low-security prison — early lunch and dinner, basketball and billiards room, plenty of outside time to walk the track — and his celebrity status there, Bannon is still primed to exit feeling particularly aggrieved.
Last week, the Danbury prison warden acknowledged in writing that Bannon had accrued enough “credits” to cut short his sentence and send him home 10 days early but simply refused to process the request, citing government bureaucratic delays. He was eligible for early release thanks to the prison reform law Trump signed in 2018 known as the First Step Act.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Bannon has insufficient time on his sentence to process a referral and secure approval for ten days of home confinement placement,” acting Warden Darek Puzio wrote to Bannon’s lawyers in a signed letter on Monday.
The next day, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols refused to intervene and let him out early either.
The far-right antagonist — who relentlessly asserts that the election will be a fraud if Trump doesn’t win — already has an eye toward the potentially tumultuous gray zone between Election Day and the legally mandated date of congressional certification of Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2025. Trump has indicated he will contest the results if he loses, opening the door to a forceful power grab via a controversial “contingent election” likely controlled by House Republicans. And he’ll have Bannon at his side.
“And as for the inevitable legal scuffles between Nov. 6 and Jan. 20 — well that’s why they’re trying to send him right back to jail,” Kassam told NOTUS.
Kassam is referring to the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s ongoing case against Bannon for allegedly defrauding donors to “We Build the Wall,” a fundraising campaign to construct a border barrier between the United States and Mexico. Federal criminal charges were eliminated when then-President Trump pardoned Bannon mere hours before he left office in January 2021. Bragg picked up a mirror version of the case that could put Bannon on trial in state court on Dec. 9. Trump, if elected, wouldn’t be able to pardon Bannon if he’s found guilty.
That said, a Trump victory and pardon could wipe Bannon’s federal criminal record clean. Justice Department prosecutors sought to punish him for flagrantly ignoring a congressional subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Committee, which wanted to question him about his role in fomenting the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building and the so-called “Green Bay Sweep” plan to halt certification of that presidential election.
Bannon, whose case was overseen by Trump appointee Judge Nichols, stayed out of prison for more than a year while his case was on appeal, but Nichols finally ordered him to show up this summer.
Having served his time, Trump’s allies see him as the leader who could carry MAGA back to the White House. The “War Room” podcast’s chief operating officer, Grace Chong, recently posted an old video of Bannon that serves as a reminder of what’s to come upon his return.
“This is a crusade!” an enraged Bannon shouts while onstage. “This is a holy war against the Deep State! Donald Trump is our instrument for retribution. … Donald Trump is our instrument for righteous indignation!”
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.