What happened
Steve Bannon, a far-right influencer and longtime adviser to Donald Trump, was released from federal prison Tuesday, returning to his “War Room” podcast to agitate for a MAGA victory one week before polls close on Election Day.
Bannon, 70, served four months in a minimum security correctional facility in Connecticut for contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Who said what
“They were going to silence me and break me,” Bannon said to reporters. “I’m not broken. I’m empowered.” He “wasted little time” returning to his role as “one of the leading provocateurs of the former president’s political movement,” The New York Times said. Bannon “bashed Democrats and their agenda” during his first few hours of freedom, The Associated Press said. While in prison, Bannon had been “receiving daily updates from his daughter” about Trump’s presidential campaign, Politico said.
What next?
Bannon’s “MAGA megaphone has suffered in his absence,” CNN said. It will “take some time to bring the audience back and to mobilize them,” liberal media analyst Madeline Peltz said to the broadcaster. While the week before the election likely won’t be “enough time to complete that,” Bannon will likely “kick into high gear in the post-election chaos that we’re all sort of anticipating.”
He is due to appear in New York state court Dec. 9 for a separate criminal trial on money laundering and fraud charges for allegedly duping donors to a private effort to build Trump’s border wall. Trump pardoned Bannon on similar federal charges in one of his final acts as president.