Desperate Steve Bannon Makes Final Appeal to Supreme Court

Steve Bannon desperately wants to stay out of prison—and now he’s making a last-ditch effort to the Supreme Court.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday night denied Bannon’s latest request to delay his prison sentence, which is set to begin July 1. Now the former Trump aide and MAGA king is appealing to the Supreme Court to save him.

Barring a Supreme Court intervention, Bannon will head to prison for four months for defying a subpoena from the House January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot in 2021. The Justice Department took the matter to federal court, leading to Bannon’s 2022 trial and conviction. The former Breitbart editor and Trump adviser fought tooth and nail, from trying to turn the trial into a circus to attempting to delay his prison sentence with last-ditch appeals, including this latest effort.

In the likely event that Bannon goes to prison, it won’t be to a minimum-security prison camp, thanks to the fact that he’s also facing charges in New York over a border wall fraud case. Instead, he’d serve time at a low-security prison, possibly Rikers Island. He’s expected to stand trial for the fraud case in September, a second attempt at holding him accountable after Trump pardoned his federal charges.

None of this appears to have humbled Bannon. He has attempted to interfere in Brazil’s politics, in addition to the upcoming election in this country, and his radio show continues to serve as a haven for far-right Republicans to rant about whatever they want. He also told a crowd at the Turning Point Action convention last Saturday about all of the people in the Justice Department that Trump will go after if he’s reelected, saying without a trace of irony that “we’re gonna use the Constitution and the rule of law to go after you and hold you accountable.”

If Bannon is expecting the Supreme Court to use the Constitution to help him avoid accountability, he may be out of luck. Peter Navarro, the former director of the White House National Trade Council, was convicted of similar charges and tried the same thing, only to be rebuffed.

Representative Lauren Boebert wants to bring morality back. Ironic, no?

The Colorado Republican went off on a tangent Thursday evening while cheerleading Louisiana’s wild new law mandating that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public school classroom, from kindergarten to state university, on prison-bound Steve Bannon’s podcast.

The Louisiana legislation is a blatant violation of the separation between church and state created by the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. To Boebert, it’s exactly what this country needs.

“I think this is something we need throughout our nation, and I am so proud of Governor Jeff Landry, he’s a wonderful man, a great friend of mine, and I’m glad he’s in that position and taking action because we need morals back in our nation, and back in our schools,” she said.

At this point, Boebert’s name has become so synonymous with her do-nothing record, as well as many humiliating scandals, that she is the last politician anyone would look to for moral guidance.

“If there is anything that we’re going to present in front of our children, it’s going to be, it should be the word of God because this is the one truth that is never going to change, and never going to leave them. It’s not some woke fad of the day that you can get canceled for believing in 10 years from now,” Boebert said.

There are about one million things that could be hung on the wall of a classroom that would (a) be true, and (b) not get you canceled in the future, without being an egregious violation of federal doctrine. Quick, someone tell her about multiplication tables!

“I don’t think it’s wrong to have something that says honor your father and mother, so that you will live a long life, that is the First Commandment that has a promise attached to it,” she continued. “I don’t think it’s bad to teach children that adultery is something that you should not do.” Boebert once fretted that if she ever left office, students might be taught “comprehensive sex-ed” in Colorado schools.

Boebert also took the opportunity to do a quick plug for the Big Lie.

“And also elicit in the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ and maybe the Left and some of these politicians are having a meltdown over having that right there listed in our classrooms.”

Whatever happened to “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” which Boebert seems to have conveniently forgotten?

Boebert’s zealous grandstanding marks the final week of her death crawl toward the Colorado primaries next Tuesday, when the far-right Republican will either be kept by constituents in her new district or brutally cast out.

Elusive right-wing billionaire Timothy Mellon made a massive donation—$50 million—to a Trump super PAC the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, according to disclosure filings. The donation is one of the largest single disclosed contributions ever, according to The New York Times, and one of the worst ways to burn $50 million, according to anyone with a functioning brain.

Mellon earned his wealth the way all hard-working Americans do: He inherited it from his grandfather, banking magnate and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Timothy Mellon’s introduction into the world of being a political powerplayer started from humble, hateful beginnings in 2010 when he donated $1.5 million for legal fees to defend Arizona’s ultra-racist “show me your papers” law, Senate Bill 1070, in court. The reclusive 81-year-old went on to become a major player in conservative politics in 2018, when he spent big on conservatives in midterm elections that year.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Mellon has spent this year’s election blowing through cash on both Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaigns, previously donating equal amounts of $25 million to both. Because when your options are between a racist demagogue and a brain-wormed conspiracy theorist, why choose?

According to The Washington Post, Mellon has made a bunch of statements that would make your ultra-racist grandfather proud. His 2015 self-published autobiography included passages that said Black people became “even more belligerent” after the expansion of social programs in the 1960s and ’70s, called people receiving social services “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam,” and described programs that help people not making enough money because billionaires hoard everything for themselves and dump money into presidential candidates who continue to cut their tax rates as “slavery redux.” Charming.

Prior to this latest billionaire boondoggle, Mellon donated $5 million to RFK Jr.’s campaign in April, according to The New York Times. Maybe he meant to give that same amount to Trump, accidentally added an extra zero and, being too wealthy for numbers to have meaning, just let it ride. Who knows. What we do know is that days after his donation, Make America Great Again Inc.—the super PAC that received the funds—stated it had raised $70 million in May (most of it Mellon’s) and had reserved $100 million in advertising in states where Trump already leads Biden.

Following his conviction, Trump’s campaign coffers now report having more cash on hand than Biden’s for the first time this election cycle—a feat that is expected to not last, as Biden gears up to collect two billion smackeroos in direct donations and another billy from outside groups with less prolifically heinous politics. According to The New York Times, Mellon’s spending spree has made him “the first donor to give $100 million in disclosed federal contributions in this year’s election,” an impressive investment that will nevertheless not be remembered by the sands of time.

Donald Trump is a big fan of the new Louisiana law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon posted his approval early Friday morning on Truth Social in an all-caps post, noting “HOW CAN WE GO WRONG???”

The bill almost certainly will invite a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds, which would likely make its way to the Supreme Court, which, thanks to Trump, has a conservative majority. In past decades, however, the court has struck down similar bills.

But Trump knows what he’s doing. This is a calculated effort to appease the Christian right, along with his attacks on abortion rights, which he tries to disguise but very clearly states to Christian audiences. Somehow, despite his philandering, lying, business fraud, and numerous other violations of the Ten Commandments, he continues to be thought of as a person of faith by 64 percent of Republicans.

Trump depends on support from the Christian right, not just for himself but also to keep the Republican Party behind him. He will need their votes to have any chance of reelection in November, and they are already making plans for what to do if he returns to the White House.

Donald Trump’s media company stock has been steadily slipping in value following his conviction on 34 felony charges, and on Thursday, it dropped back down near its all-time low. 

Since the verdict in Trump’s hush-money case was decided last month, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, have dropped in value by nearly 40 percent, according to CNBC. 

The stock market closed Thursday with DJT (Trump Media’s stock symbol) another 15 percent down, valued at just $26.75—dipping dangerously near its all-time low of $22.84, which it hit in April. At the time, Trump stock was doing so badly that Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes wrote a letter to Congress asking them to investigate the anonymous trading of DJT stock. He was previously torched for reaching out to NASDAQ to complain about “naked short-selling.”

It’s been another particularly tumultuous trading week for DJT, beginning with Trump’s stock plummeting nearly 10 percent on Tuesday. After closing that day, the SEC declared that Trump Media’s registration statement had gone into effect, which caused the value to dip another 17 percent in post-market trading.  

The registration statement allowed some investors to exercise warrants, which permit them to swap and sell shares. Unfortunately for standard shareholders, who are not granted the benefit of warrants, this can dilute the value of their shares.

Less than a month ago, everything was different for DJT. Shares of Trump Media stock cost a whopping $49, and Trump’s 114,750,000 shares were worth more than $5.6 billion.

At today’s rate, the former president’s shares would be worth closer to $3.2 billion, and it’s hard to imagine what they will be worth by September, when Trump will actually be allowed to sell. 

DJT continues to prove itself to be a uniquely volatile stock, the value of which is tied to the fate of one convicted felon and his ability to appeal to voters.