When Stephen K. Bannon reported to federal prison almost four months ago, he left his podcast in the hands of lesser-known pundits and a void in the right-wing messaging machine behind Donald J. Trump.
Soon, Mr. Bannon will be jumping back into the fray.
Mr. Bannon, 70, a podcast host, political strategist and Trump confidant, is set to be released from a federal prison in Connecticut on Tuesday. His newfound liberty drops one of the country’s most influential conservative agitators into the final stretch of a campaign already full of inflammatory rhetoric, anxiety, suspicion and talk of retribution.
Mr. Bannon was convicted on contempt charges after he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking information about the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and he reported to prison on July 1. In the run-up, he claimed, echoing Mr. Trump, that the Justice Department had been weaponized against him.
In his absence, his daily podcast, “War Room,” has slumped. A rotating cast of guest hosts, including Dave Brat, a former representative of Virginia, and Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, have failed to draw as many listeners as Mr. Bannon could.
On Oct. 1, for example, “War Room” rated 52nd among political podcasts, according to the analytics firm Podcharts, behind shows hosted by Al Franken, the former senator from Minnesota, and the Lincoln Project. Before Mr. Bannon’s imprisonment, Podcharts routinely ranked the show among the country’s top 10 political podcasts.
Mr. Bannon’s return tosses a variable into a tight race. Mr. Trump’s supporters hope Mr. Bannon can make a difference in the final week, building enthusiasm among the party’s base, persuading low-frequency voters to vote and, potentially, helping prepare for the election’s aftermath.
“Steve Bannon is the intellectual leader and general of the MAGA movement,” said Mike Davis, who Donald Trump Jr., among others, has cited as a possible candidate for Attorney General in a second Trump administration and is a frequent contributor to “War Room.” Mr. Davis added: “Bannon will come out of prison a week before the election like a roaring caged lion.”
Exactly what that will sound like is unclear. Mr. Bannon, still in prison, couldn’t be reached for comment, but he has announced a news conference at a New York City hotel for Tuesday afternoon.
His daughter Maureen Bannon, who helps run his podcast, declined to answer questions about his plans or respond to speculation that he might travel directly to Allentown, Pa., to speak at a Tuesday evening rally for Mr. Trump.
The Trump campaign also did not respond to requests for comment.
A shrewd tactician, Mr. Bannon plays an unusual role on the right: the rare backroom power broker who can draw crowds based on his own celebrity. He ran Mr. Trump’s successful 2016 campaign during its final stretch and briefly served in the former president’s administration before becoming one of the prime instigators of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
From the set of “War Room,” the podcast he has hosted since 2019, Mr. Bannon has promoted Republican candidates for office, while lending his platform to a stream of figures both mainstream and marginal, including commentators, salesmen and conspiracy theorists.
Just two weeks after Mr. Bannon was incarcerated, one of his principal backers, the exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo, was convicted of fraud, money laundering and racketeering in federal court. Prosecutors noted that Mr. Guo had paid Mr. Bannon $1 million under a consulting contract.
Peter Navarro, who was Mr. Trump’s trade adviser, also served four months in prison for contempt of Congress this year. On the day he was released, he flew to Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention. Since then, Mr. Navarro has been a frequent guest host on “War Room.”
“Steve will be laser focused on getting people to the polls,” Mr. Navarro said. “He’ll do that broadcasting the show, and he will reach a lot of people with the message of how important this election is.”
Both he and Mr. Bannon have complained that they should have served shorter sentences, arguing that the Bureau of Prisons was deliberately slow in processing their requests for early release under the First Step Act, which Mr. Trump signed into law in 2018.
Citing a letter from the warden at the low-security prison in Danbury, Conn., where Mr. Bannon has been held, Maureen Bannon claimed on “War Room” last week that her father’s release had been delayed to try to prevent Mr. Trump from winning on Nov. 5.
In the letter to Mr. Bannon’s lawyers, the warden said that Mr. Bannon, because of the brevity of his sentence, was not eligible to be placed in a halfway house, as required in such cases of early release.
Matt Boyle, a reporter at Breitbart News, which Mr. Bannon co-founded, said he had been in regular touch with him via email. “He’ll ask me what I think about where the race is at. He’ll ask me how things are going in terms of the ground game,” Mr. Boyle said. “He’s very focused on the ground game.”
Mr. Bannon has also been giving classes on civics and politics to other inmates, said Mr. Navarro. He said he thought that Mr. Bannon might help sway votes through his mentoring.
“Inmates won’t be casting votes, but their families will and they’ve got big families,” Mr. Navarro said.
Once Mr. Bannon is released, his contributions could extend beyond Nov. 5, given his past efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of the election system. Before the 2020 contest, he called for Mr. Trump to declare that he had won before vote counting was finished. This, he said, was critical to efforts to “set the engine, the narrative engine, about not stealing this election.”
After Joseph R. Biden was declared the victor, Mr. Bannon became one of the louder voices in the “stop the steal” movement. On the eve of Jan. 6, 2021, he predicted on his podcast that “all hell will break loose tomorrow.”
Two weeks later — on his last day in office — Mr. Trump issued a pardon for Mr. Bannon, who had been charged with helping defraud thousands of people who donated to a nonprofit they believed would finish building a wall on the Mexican border.
Federal prosecutors alleged Mr. Bannon had diverted more than $1 million from that campaign. The nonprofit’s founder, Brian Kolfage, was not pardoned and was sentenced to over four years in prison.
Mr. Bannon still faced legal exposure from the project, called “We Build the Wall Inc.” Last year, a New York State judge awarded Mr. Bannon’s lawyers in that case nearly $500,000 for fees Mr. Bannon had not paid. And in 2022, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, charged Mr. Bannon with fraud, money laundering and conspiracy for his involvement in the scheme. A presidential pardon does not apply to state court.
Mr. Bragg’s office, which also brought the charges that resulted in Mr. Trump’s conviction on 34 criminal counts, is scheduled to begin its trial against Mr. Bannon on Dec. 9. If convicted, Mr. Bannon could face up to 15 years in prison.
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