Speaker Johnson plots to use House to free Bannon

House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to defend Steve Bannon from an impending prison term by filing a brief in support of the former Trump adviser via the House of Representatives.

“We’re working on filing an amicus brief,” Johnson said on Fox News after a House vote allowed the chamber to take such an action. “The January 6th committee was, we think, wrongfully constituted. We think the work was tainted.”

Bannon’s refusal to answer to a Congressional subpoena from the Select Committee on the January 6th attack landed him a 4-month sentence in prison, despite numerous failed appeals. But the House vote to disavow the previous chambers’ finding that Bannon violated its orders may boost his chances of staying free.

Johnson has worked to align himself more closely with the former president after far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s failed ouster attempt and has previously vowed to pull levers to help Donald Trump through his legal trouble.

The former president tasked the speaker with finding ways to “overturn” his criminal conviction earlier this month, Politico reported, as Johnson publicly bragged of him singing his praises.

Trump, still facing numerous cases at state and federal levels after his May conviction in New York for falsifying records to hide hush money payments, is attacking the judicial process from just about any angle possible.

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its verdict on a presidential immunity case, itself an effort to slow legal proceedings against the former president.