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« Last post by rainman2 on August 26, 2026, 10:18:40 PM »
NOT SO FAST! A Trump-appointed Federal judge just CRUSHED the DOJ’s one-sentence attempt to erase Steve Bannon’s criminal conviction.
Even a judge Trump himself appointed just told the Justice Department their attempt to make Steve Bannon's contempt-of-Congress conviction disappear wasn't going to fly. All it took was a one-line hand-wave to dismiss their misbegotten attempt to erase Bannon’s misconduct.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied the government's motion to dismiss Bannon's indictment Wednesday, ruling that prosecutors failed to provide anything resembling an actual explanation. Bannon, convicted by a jury in 2022 for defying a subpoena from the January 6th committee, served four months in prison after his conviction was upheld on appeal.
Once Trump returned to office, his Justice Department suddenly decided the case should vanish — but their justification consisted of essentially one sentence: "The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice."
That's it. No reasoning. No factual basis. Just a bare assertion that the DOJ wants it gone.
Judge Nichols simply wasn't having it. He cited binding D.C. Circuit precedent that courts "will not be content with a mere conclusory statement by the prosecutor that dismissal is in the public interest." He called the government's justification exactly the kind of empty statement precedent says is insufficient, and denied the motion — though "without prejudice," meaning the DOJ can try again if it actually shows its work and provided a real reason for dropping the charges.
But there's a bigger problem lurking for prosecutors buried in a footnote. Nichols pointed to a 2025 appeals court ruling holding that the government generally can only dismiss a case under this rule while the prosecution is still technically pending — and while the Supreme Court vacated the appellate judgment against Bannon, Nichols's own original district court judgment convicting him was never vacated. In other words, the DOJ may not even have the legal authority to do what it's asking, regardless of how it explains itself.
Let's be clear about what's happening here: this is Trump's own Justice Department trying to erase accountability for one of his closest allies, using nothing more than a bureaucratic shrug, and getting stopped by a judge Trump himself put on the bench.
When even Trump-appointed judges won't rubber-stamp this administration's attempts to protect its own, that says everything about how transparently political this effort actually is.
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