Steve Bannon is released from prison in time for last week’s election day

CNN
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Steve Bannon was released from federal prison on Tuesday, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. He emerged 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 CEO of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has remained a strong 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 present his radio program on Tuesday morning.

He was convicted in 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He continues to appeal his conviction.

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

There are some signs that things are getting a little better as Bannon prepares for his return.

“While we continue to see election denial activists on the show as a focal point, you see that ‘War Room’ couldn’t sustain itself without Bannon,” said Madeline Peltz, deputy director of rapid response at Media Matters, a progressive non- profit organization that does extensive media monitoring.

Peltz still predicted that Bannon would be a prominent voice for election denial if Trump fell short after Election Day.

“I think it’s going to take some time to bring the public back and 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 do think that in the post-election chaos, you’re going to see all of us kind of anticipating in high gear.”

Although Bannon’s show is mainly seen as a boost to the Trump base, data from Edison Research podcast statistics showed that nearly half of Bannon’s audience were 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, with the relevant discount code).

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

Winters then turned her attention to the presidential race, claiming, “It’s not an election, it’s a voting war.” It’s the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that Bannon embraced and promoted as one of the early voices in the “Stop the Steal” movement in 2020.

In May, Bannon claimed on his podcast that “they will do everything they can to steal this election,” repeating the baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“Bannon is one of the most talented broadcasters among his peers when it comes to taking current events, extracting a grain of truth from them and spinning an elaborate conspiracy theory on top of that, which then becomes the fuel for the action being undertaken. taken by the grassroots in response to these lies,” said Peltz of Media Matters. “There’s really no one who has the same talent for that specific approach to disinformation.”

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

CNN’s Sabrina Shulman, Maria Aguilar Prieto and Maria Sole Campinoti contributed to this report.