CNN
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Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, declared at a conservative gathering on Saturday that the 2025 inauguration will be a “day of accountability” and vowed to investigate and prosecute those investigating the former president and his political allies.
Pointing to Trump’s recent conviction in New York, Bannon told a crowd at a Turning Point Action “People’s Convention” in Detroit just hours before Trump was scheduled to speak that Trump’s supporters would “have all the evidence.”
“You will be investigated, you will be prosecuted and you will be incarcerated,” he said. “This has nothing to do with retaliation. This has nothing to do with revenge, because retaliation and revenge may be on an order of magnitude. This has to do with justice.”
Bannon was referring to recent comments by Trump vowing “retaliation” against his supporters and saying “revenge can sometimes be justified.”
Trump has repeatedly shied away from friendly interviewers, including multiple conversations with Fox News host and friend Sean Hannity, to moderate his comments and avoid threats of retaliation or criminal prosecution against his political opponents.
“Look, once this election is over, I have every right to go after them based on what they’ve done, and it’s easy because it’s Joe Biden,” the former president told Hannity earlier this month.
Some of Trump’s allies, including former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, a veteran of the 2016 campaign and Trump administration, have downplayed the former president’s comments. Earlier this month, Conway noted that Trump’s Justice Department did not try to indict Hillary Clinton despite chants of “Put her in jail!” chanted at her 2016 campaign rallies.
But other allies have responded more strongly to Trump’s guilty verdict in New York’s hush-money trial. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Attorney General Matthew Colangelo to testify “in this unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump.” In response to the verdict, several Republican senators, including vice presidential nominee Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, signed a letter saying they would not work with the Biden administration to pass legislation, confirm judicial nominees, or increase non-security spending.
Bannon’s incendiary speech came two weeks before he was jailed. He was convicted of contempt of Congress in 2022 for failing to turn over documents and testimony to a House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He was sentenced to four months in prison and a federal judge earlier this month ordered him to be incarcerated by July 1.
The bombastic Bannon, once a top adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign and senior White House aide, is now a right-wing podcaster with a loyal Trump following.
Though Bannon is no longer the Trump insider he once was, he was influential in the House conservatives’ ousting of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and claims credit for the firing of former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. His podcast, “War Room,” has also become a megaphone for false claims of election fraud and a rewriting of history about the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Bannon regaled the audience with the recent conviction of the former president in New York, claiming, without elaborating, that Trump “deserves 700 years in prison” and that “they’re going to make him serve all of it.”
Trump’s sentencing in the New York case, his only conviction in his four cases so far, is scheduled for July 11. The judge can sentence the former president to probation or up to four years in state prison on each charge, with a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Pointing to Trump allies such as indicted Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani, Bannon said, “They’re turning people into political prisoners and putting them in prison, and they’re going to put every single one of you in this audience in prison.”
Bannon told the crowd that they were “at the vanguard of this revolution”, adding that “we are not ready to be ruled by criminals”, and vowing to “clean up” the Department of Justice and “dismantle” the FBI.
“November 5th is Judgment Day. January 20th, 2025 will be Accountability Day,” Bannon said.
