Steve Bannon is released from prison in time for the last-week push to Election Day

CNN

By Sara Murray and Sabrina Shulman, CNN

(CNN) — Steve Bannon was released from federal prison Tuesday, according to a source with knowledge, emerging just a week before Election Day to retake the helm of his weakened right-wing media platform.

Bannon, a right-wing podcast host and the chief executive of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has remained a strident supporter of the former president. Even as he reported to federal prison in Connecticut in July, Bannon insisted he would influence the presidential race from behind bars and that his “War Room” podcast would continue to energize the Trump base.

Bannon was met early Tuesday morning by his daughter Maureen. He is expected to host his radio program later Tuesday morning.

He was convicted in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. He is continuing to appeal his conviction.

While in prison, Bannon digitally kept in touch with a small group of loyalists, including some who served as guest hosts for the podcast, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Bannon would in part discuss news of the day and politics including topics he thought about for the show.

However, Bannon’s MAGA megaphone has suffered in his absence. “War Room,” which frequently appeared in Apple’s Top Podcasts before Bannon reported to prison, fell off the charts by early July, according to data from Podchaser. By another measure, the podcast was once near the top of the Apple political podcast charts and has since fallen out of the top 25, per Podchaser data.

There are some signs that it’s ticking up slightly as Bannon prepares to return.

“Though we’ve been seeing election denial activists coming on the show still as a central hub, you see that ‘War Room,’ it wasn’t able to sustain itself without Bannon,” said Madeline Peltz, deputy director for rapid response at Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit that does extensive media monitoring.

Peltz still predicted Bannon would be a prominent voice for election denialism if it appears Trump is coming up short after Election Day.

“I think it’s going to take some time to bring the audience back and to mobilize them,” Peltz said. “I don’t think the one-week period between now and the election is enough time to complete that, but I think really, you’ll see it kick into high gear in the post-election chaos that we’re all sort of anticipating.”

While Bannon’s show is mainly seen as an energizer for the Trump base, data from Edison Research’s podcast metrics found that nearly half of Bannon’s audience was made up of Republicans but about a third of listeners were independents.

On the “War Room” podcast, a cast of fill-in hosts cheered Bannon’s return.

Prominent election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell offered a deal on his MyPillow products to celebrate Bannon’s release (free pillows, plus shipping and handling, with the relevant discount code.)

“It’s less than 24 hours until Stephen K. Bannon is back a free man and preaching the gospel of MAGA here in the ‘War Room,’” Natalie Winters, one of the podcast guest hosts said Monday.

Winters then turned her focus to the presidential race, claiming, “It’s not an election, it’s ballot warfare.” It’s the kind of incendiary rhetoric Bannon embraced and promoted as an early voice in the “Stop the Steal” movement in 2020.

In May, Bannon claimed on his podcast that “they’re going to do everything to steal this election,” as he reiterated the baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“Bannon is one of the most talented broadcasters among his peers, in terms of taking current events, pulling out a kernel of truth from them, and then spinning an elaborate conspiracy theory on top of it, which then becomes the fuel for the action that’s taken by the grassroots in response to these lies,” Peltz from Media Matters said. “There’s really no one who has quite the same level of talent for that particular misinformation approach.”

To mark his release, Bannon’s team said he plans to hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon in New York.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Maria Aguilar Prieto and Maria Sole Campinoti contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.