Judge Orders Bannon to Surrender for Prison Term by July 1

A federal judge on Thursday told Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, to surrender by July 1 to start serving a four-month prison term for disobeying a congressional subpoena.

Mr. Bannon was sentenced in October 2022 on contempt of Congress charges after he refused to give testimony to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Judge Carl J. Nichols, who has overseen the case, allowed him to remain free while he appealed. Last month, however, Mr. Bannon lost the first round of that challenge as a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in Washington decided that his guilty verdict on charges of ignoring the House committee’s demand for his testimony was proper.

Because of the panel’s ruling, Judge Nichols said he no longer believed that Mr. Bannon could rightfully continue to postpone serving his sentence.

“I do not feel my original basis for Mr. Bannon’s stay exists any longer,” he said.

Lawyers for Mr. Bannon have promised to ask the full appeals court to reconsider the panel’s decision. And Judge Nichols said that Mr. Bannon would have to start serving his sentence in less than four weeks unless the full appeals court took the case and issued its own ruling to pause the sentence from being enforced.

Judge Nichols’s decision seemed to catch Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, David Schoen, by surprise, and he approached the podium after it was issued and started arguing with the judge.