It was a busy morning outside the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury. After roughly two years of trying to appeal a guilty verdict for contempt of Congress, Steve Bannon arrived shortly before his noon deadline to surrender at the federal prison for his four-month sentence. As with many things surrounding the former Trump adviser/MAGA podcaster/pardoned border-wall grifter, it was a circus.
Dozens of supporters showed up to support their favorite MAGA podcaster in his moment of need. A priest from a nearby parish offered his support to Bannon, which he used as an opportunity to grandstand. “Father, don’t pray for me, pray for our enemies,” Bannon said to the throng. “They’re the ones that are going to need the prayers.” Getting a few more hits in, he described himself as a “political prisoner” and said that he was proud to stand up “to the Garland corrupt DOJ.”
Bannon also told his devoted supporters to basically leave him alone for the next four months. “Don’t send me a letter, because I’m not going to read it,” he said. We’ll see about that.
For the next four months — until just a few days before the election — Bannon will be in the low-security prison for ignoring a subpoena from the House subcommittee investigating the Capitol riot. (He is now Donald Trump’s second ex-adviser to be sentenced for such a charge, joining Peter Navarro; together, they are the only two former White House officials to be sentenced on a contempt-of-Congress violation.) FCI-Danbury, which was a men’s prison that became a famous women’s prison and then became a men’s prison, has a long history of famous inmates, from Moonies leader Sun Myung Moon to Housewife Teresa Giudice and poet and conscientious objector Lauryn Hill (for tax reasons). It is also the setting of Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black.
Devoted listeners of Bannon’s War Room podcast should not fear for their loss of content. In one of his last shows, he announced that a rotation of conservative guests, including Lauren Boebert, would hold down the pod as Bannon does his time. Perhaps, though, using his allotted 320 monthly minutes of phone time, he will be able to call into his own show — the pod equivalent of fellow Trump pardon recipient Kodak Black recording a song over the prison phone.
