Steve Bannon, who led Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, has been released after serving a sentence for contempt imposed by the U.S. justice system. Bannon was released from prison last Tuesday, a week before the presidential elections to be held on November 5, in which Trump hopes to run again as a candidate.
Bannon, who informally advised Trump, urged the former president to focus on January 6, 2021, the date when the election results were to be certified. This information comes from the book 'Peril,' written by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Bannon was chief strategist at the White House from January to August 2017, during which his rhetoric to dismantle the political class and end the elites did not resonate much in the Trump Administration, where millionaires predominated.
During his time in prison last July in Connecticut, Bannon remained a supporter of Trump and claimed that his 'War Room' program would continue to motivate the former president's followers. Despite his imprisonment, he maintained contact with a small group of supporters, and some of them acted as guest hosts on his podcast.
Bannon was convicted for defying a congressional subpoena requiring him to testify before a committee investigating the 2021 Capitol riot, where Trump supporters stormed to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's victory. This also put him at odds with congressional Republicans over his stance against cutting taxes for the rich. Bannon, considered a prophet of the 'alt-right' populist right, aims to become the 'global infrastructure for the global populist movement' and has supported various far-right and populist political movements around the world, especially in Europe.
