Steve Bannon was released from federal prison on Tuesday, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. He was released just a week before Election Day to take over the helm of his flagging right-wing media platform.
Bannon, a right-wing podcast host and the CEO of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has remained an outspoken supporter of the former president. Even as he checked into federal prison in Connecticut in July, Bannon insisted he would influence the presidential race from prison and that his podcast “War Room” would continue to energize Trump’s base.
Bannon was met by his daughter Maureen early Tuesday morning. He is expected to host his radio show 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 investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He continues to appeal his conviction.
While in prison, Bannon kept in touch digitally with a small group of loyalists, including some who served as guest hosts on the podcast, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Bannon would discuss the day’s news and politics in part, including topics he was thinking about for the show.
Bannon’s MAGA megaphone has suffered in his absence, however. “War Room,” which frequently appeared on Apple’s Top Podcasts before Bannon reported to prison, dropped off the charts in early July, according to Podchaser data. By another measure, the podcast once topped Apple’s political podcast charts and has since fallen out of the top 25, according to Podchaser data.
There are some signs that things are looking up as Bannon prepares to return.
“While we’ve still seen the election denialists as a central hub of the show, you see that ‘War Room,’ it couldn’t sustain itself without Bannon,” said Madeline Peltz, deputy director of rapid response at Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit that conducts extensive media monitoring.
Peltz still predicted that Bannon would be a prominent voice for election denial if Trump appears to be falling short after Election Day.
“I think it’s going to take some time to get the public back and mobilized,” Peltz said. “I don’t think the one-week window between now and the election is enough time to do that, but I do think you’re going to see it accelerate in the post-election chaos that we’re all kind of anticipating.”
While Bannon’s show is seen primarily as an energizer for the Trump base, Edison Research’s podcast statistics showed that nearly half of Bannon’s audience was Republican, but about a third of listeners were independents.
On the “War Room” podcast, a cast of stand-in hosts cheered Bannon’s return.
Leading 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 before Stephen K. Bannon is back as a free man and 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, “This isn’t an election, this is a ballot box war.” It’s the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that 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 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, 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.