The Democrats’ unprecedented lawfare campaign is extending beyond former President Donald Trump to target conservative media ahead of the November election.
On Thursday, a federal judge upheld a four-month prison sentence handed down to former Trump White House adviser and the host of the “War Room” podcast, Steve Bannon. The conservative podcaster was ordered to report to prison on July 1, just two weeks before the Republican National Convention (RNC) and four months before Election Day.
“There’s not a prison built or jail built that will ever shut me up,” Bannon told reporters outside of the courthouse Thursday, stating that he plans to appeal “all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”
Bannon was convicted two years ago for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the illegally established House Select Committee on Jan. 6 as part of lawmakers’ Soviet-style inquisition last Congress. A federal appeals court rejected an appeal last month, and now Bannon is expected to join former Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro behind bars. Navarro was similarly convicted of contempt of Congress last year and began a four-month sentence in March at a detention facility in Miami.
Bannon’s indictment was the first act for U.S. District Attorney Matthew Graves, who, according to court documents posted on X by Julie Kelly, complained about Bannon mocking members of the Jan. 6 Committee “through offensive name-calling.”
While Democrats exploit the judicial system to imprison chief political opponents ahead of the November contest, including the host of a top conservative podcast nationwide, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has cracked down on The Epoch Times with the Monday indictment of the paper’s chief financial officer. Weidong “Bill” Guan was arrested Sunday and pled not guilty in a federal courtroom this week to charges in a $67 million money laundering scheme. Federal prosecutors said Guan’s team leveraged cryptocurrency to “knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds, including proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits.”
Whether Guan is convicted will ultimately be up to a New York jury, but if Trump’s recent Manhattan “hush money” trial is any indication of Guan’s fate, the Epoch Times CFO will be assumed guilty until proven innocent before a far-left jury pool. Last month Trump was hastily convicted on all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records because he labeled payments to an attorney as legal expenses. Guan will now spend the remaining five months before the election fighting off federal charges as the Democrats escalate the lawfare campaign against political opponents.
Sidelining dissident speech while keeping Trump and his campaign surrogates in prison and court has become a primary strategy for Democrats desperate to maintain control of the Oval Office this fall.
Censorship also remains a centerpiece of that strategy after public-private efforts to suppress conservative speech played a pivotal role in propelling Joe Biden to the White House four years ago. In 2022, One America News Network (OANN) was dropped by one of the channel’s top distributors, DirectTV. Later this month, the Supreme Court will rule on the permissibility of the federal government’s scope of authority to implement a censorship regime in the landmark lawsuit Murthy v. Missouri.
