Trump ally Steve Bannon was ordered to report to prison on July 1 for contempt of Congress.

Washington — Trump ally Steve Bannon was ordered to report to prison July 1, after a federal judge held a hearing on whether to allow him to serve his four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress.

Judge Carl Nichols ruled from the bench that an appeals court ruling largely resolves the outstanding legal questions, but he gives Bannon's legal team time to appeal.

Prosecutors pushed last month for the former White House chief strategist to be sent to prison after an appeals court rejected a request to overturn his criminal conviction. Bannon opposes this decision and supports the judge who supervised his criminal trial does not yet have the legal authority to impose the sentence as his defense team pursues other avenues of appeal.

A jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Congressional investigators have been interested in Bannon's conduct in more than one dozen key areas, including his communications with former President Donald Trump as he resisted the results of the 2020 presidential election.

At the time, Bannon claimed he did not comply with the order because of executive privilege concerns raised by Trump and said his former lawyer advised him not to respond to the order. subpoena due to potential privilege.

Judge Nichols ordered before trial that Bannon could not inform the jury of the defense attorney's opinion because of binding legal precedent. After his conviction, Judge Carl Nichols sentenced Bannon to four months in prison, but did not impose the decision, finding it “likely” that the conviction would be overturned.

Bannon's defense later appealed the conviction.

Last month, an appeals court rejected his arguments and ruled that “defending Bannon with the advice of an attorney is no defense at all.” The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the jury's conviction and wrote that the defense it sought was “unavailable under this law.”

“Nothing in the Bannon authorities relies on challenging the long-standing interpretation of the term 'willful'… as requiring a willful and intentional failure to respond to a subpoena,” the judges wrote last month in their review.

Nonetheless, the committee ordered that its decision would not take effect until seven days after Bannon filed his appeal, leaving room for another court to delay the prison sentence again.

But the Justice Department took the case to Nichols' court and asked the judge to lift the suspension of Bannon's four-month prison sentence. Prosecutors argued there was no longer a “substantial question of law” since the conviction had been upheld.

In a previous order, Judge Nichols indicated that his main concern during Thursday's hearing would be whether he had the legal authority to move forward.

“Defendant's argument that the Court has no jurisdiction to lift the suspension of sentence pending issuance of the warrant is futile. He practically admits that there is not a single case to support his position,” prosecutors wrote.

Bannon's defense team pushed back, however, writing that Nichols “does not have the authority” to send Bannon to prison, as the appeals court chose to do without the mandate for its ruling. And even if the judge ruled he had the authority, Bannon's team wrote, Nichols should still refrain from sending Bannon to prison because “the harm caused would be truly irreparable and unjust if the ruling, already fully executed, further examination was then canceled.”

“There is no reason to consider removing the stay of sentence pending appeal until the appeal process is fully completed,” attorney David Schoen wrote.

Schoen argued in a statement to CBS News that “this case raises vitally important constitutional questions directly involving the separation of powers” that should be considered by the full Washington Court of Appeals and “ultimately, by the Supreme Court. He also said the appeals court “ignored half a century of case law” in issuing a decision that he would push to have overturned.

Bannon is not the only Trump White House official convicted of defying a House committee subpoena on Jan. 6. Former trade adviser Peter Navarro is currently serving a four-month prison sentence after a Washington jury found him guilty of contempt.

Like Bannon, Navarro is appealing his conviction, but the judge in his case chose not to delay imposing the prison sentence, a decision that was upheld by higher courts.

Bannon was not in the White House during the final months of the Trump administration that were of interest to the Jan. 6 committee, but he continued to exert influence within the former president's political base. Following Trump's conviction on charges in New York state last week, Bannon had argued for retaliation if Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, took back the White House.