The organizers of an international conservative conference stand defiant after a court ordered one of its featured speakers—a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump—to begin serving prison time shortly before the conference starts in July.
A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Steve Bannon must begin serving his sentence for contempt of Congress charges on July 1. Bannon’s conviction came in 2022 after a jury found him guilty of ignoring a subpoena from the House’s Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee.
Bannon’s four-month stint behind bars is scheduled to begin just days before his appearance at the National Conservatism Conference, which starts on July 8 in Washington, D.C. The Edmund Burke Foundation, which manages the three-day event, called Bannon’s prosecution “lawfare,” a term that means legal warfare.
“Steve Bannon has been one of the world’s leading nationalists for decades,” Saurabh Sharma, the foundation’s executive director, told The Daily Signal. “The global Left knows this and thinks it can silence him with endless lawfare. It is wrong.
“His public witness has changed the course of nations, and we look forward to having him be an integral part of National Conservatism Conferences for years to come.”
The foundation declined to comment on whether it plans to deliver Bannon’s speech on his behalf at the conference.
The “War Room” podcast host is appealing his conviction.
The high-profile conference, also known as NatCon, “will feature over 100 of the most cutting-edge thinkers the national conservative movement has to offer,” according to Sharma. The lineup includes politicians from the U.S. and abroad, policy experts, religious leaders, commentators, and journalists such as The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan.
NatCon organizers say they are no strangers to government pushback against their movement. European authorities tried to shut down the conference in Brussels in April, sending police to block people from attending and stating publicly that “the far Right is not welcome.” A Belgian court order allowed the gathering to continue, however.
“The crackdown demonstrated just what the ‘rule of law’ really means—or whom it serves,” Edmund Burke Foundation Chairman Yoram Hazony told The Daily Signal. “It was a preview of how law enforcement, which is intended to keep the public safe, can instead be deployed to shut down political opposition.”
Hazony said, “If anyone still believes that conservatives were paranoid or indulging in conspiracy theories in terms of cancel culture targeting the political Right, the attempted shutdown of NatCon in Europe’s capital removed all doubt.”
Sharma emphasized, however, “We will continue undeterred—the fate of independent nations hangs in the balance, and we will not be cowed by petty bureaucrats in Brussels or anywhere else.”
“The global Left knows that national conservatism is the greatest threat to [its] misrule,” he told The Daily Signal. “It is right.”
