Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted by protesters

Before conservative media star Steve Bannon made his statement about starting his prison sentence on Monday, Bannon and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene were interrupted by protesters in their speeches to the crowd.

Bannon, the former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022 after being found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bannon avoided serving his sentence while fighting appeals against his conviction, arguing that he failed to comply with the congressional subpoena due to executive privilege and that he was merely relying on the advice of his former attorney.

On Friday, the Supreme Court rejected Bannon’s last-ditch bid to stay out of prison while he appeals, a bid that lower courts had already rejected. Bannon will have to turn himself in on Monday to begin his sentence.

Bannon reported to serve his sentence on Monday and arrived at the federal prison in Connecticut, where he joined Greene, a Republican from Georgia, for a curbside news conference outside the low-security federal prison.

However, journalist Aaron Rupar posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) showing the two speaking out against the prison sentence while protesters interrupted them. They can be heard shouting, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”

Newsweek has emailed Greene’s office for comment.

In the video, Bannon can be heard attacking other politicians and blaming them for his downfall. He says, “I am a political prisoner of Nancy Pelosi. I am a political prisoner of Merrick Garland. I am a political prisoner of Joe Biden.”

Meanwhile, Greene can be heard attacking Democrats, declaring, “Where are the Democrats, where are they? They’re nowhere.”

Bannon’s comments echo similar remarks he made in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, in which he said he had no regrets about not complying with the congressional subpoena while calling himself a “political prisoner.”

“If it took me going to jail to finally get the House of Representatives to take action and delegitimize the illegitimate J6 committee, then it’s worth going to jail,” Bannon said.

Meanwhile, despite the chants outside the federal prison on Monday, there were others who expressed their support for Bannon: Several held up signs, one of which read “Free Bannon.”

The Republican congresswoman had previously also targeted President Joe Biden and several politicians during Bannon’s prison sentence, writing on X on Sunday: “While Republicans are gearing up to put cruise control on and roll into November, the Biden regime is putting patriotic Americans in jail and turning a blind eye to the government buildup. Tomorrow, Steve Bannon will appear in a federal prison. This is a DISGRACE to our country and an affront to the legal principles on which it was founded,” Greene added. “Republican voters must fight harder than ever: This election is not over.”

Greene, a Trump supporter, also shared a clip of herself appearing in Bannon’s War Room In that podcast, she accused the January 6 committee of being “illegitimate,” adding that Bannon’s contempt conviction should be overturned.

Greene pointed out that former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy selected five Republican members for the committee in July 2021. However, Jim Banks and Jim Jordan were rejected by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leading McCarthy to withdraw his other nominations, after which Pelosi selected Adam Kinzinger to be the only two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel alongside Liz Cheney.

McCarthy then withdrew his other nominations, and Pelosi selected Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney as the only two Republicans on the January 6 panel.

Kinzinger and Cheney were among the ten Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Trump after the riots.

In a speech at WarRoom, Greene accused Kinzinger and Cheney, both fierce critics of Trump, of being “clear Democrats” and “traitors” to the Republican Party.

“She (Pelosi) appointed them to the committee. That meant the committee was set up with less than 13 (members). Once again, she broke the rules of the House, her own rules as Speaker of the House. They issued these subpoenas, but none of those subpoenas had any meaning. That committee was totally illegitimate and political in nature, and the entire Democratic Congress was off track at that point,” Greene said.