Former Trump Populist Advisor Steve Bannon Freed From Prison

Photo: Getty Images via AFP Steve Bannon, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), on February 24, in Maryland

Yuki Iwamura – Agence France-Presse in Washington

Published at 9:01 Updated at 10:29

• United States

Donald Trump's former influential White House adviser Steve Bannon was released from prison on Tuesday, where he was being held for obstructing Congress' investigative powers, a week before a presidential election that is expected to be very close.

Also influential in Europe, the 70-year-old right-wing populist ideologue was sentenced to four months in prison for his refusal to cooperate with the parliamentary inquiry into the storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.

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This sentence was confirmed on appeal in May and Steve Bannon began serving his sentence on July 1, in a Connecticut prison.

His expected release was announced by most major American media outlets in a particularly tense electoral context between anti-migrant rhetoric and personal attacks on the Republican side, with Donald Trump neck and neck in the polls against Democrat Kamala Harris.

The tense end of the campaign raises fears of post-election chaos in the event of a contestation of the results by Donald Trump's supporters.

“I am not broken. “I feel refreshed,” Steve Bannon told the New York Times on Tuesday.

Steve Bannon is scheduled to hold a news conference in New York on Tuesday, according to CBS.

He could also resume control of his podcast, War Room, on Tuesday to continue, as he had promised, to support the Republican candidate.

The former adviser to Donald Trump had been one of the spokespersons for the never-proven accusations about the rigging of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.

Carried by Trump, then in the White House, and his allies, this discourse reached its climax on January 6, 2021, when thousands of the Republican's supporters stormed the seat of the American Congress, in an attempt to prevent the certification of the Democrat's victory.

The day before January 6, he had predicted that “all hell” would flood in. And that same day, he had spoken on the phone with the outgoing president.

Less than two weeks later, Donald Trump pardoned his former adviser in a federal case of embezzling funds allegedly intended for the construction of a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. He is still charged in a local part of the case in New York.