Washington DC - The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for Steve Bannon, a former advisor to President Donald Trump, to overturn his conviction in a case linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Bannon, a leading figure on the far right, served four months in a federal prison in 2024 for defying a subpoena to testify before a congressional panel investigating the 2021 attack.

But he appealed to the Supreme Court to have the conviction overturned, a legal challenge the Trump administration joined in February.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has described the move as a course correction from what he claimed was "the prior administration's weaponization of the justice system."

In a brief, unsigned decision on Monday, the Supreme Court granted this request, vacating the appellate ruling upholding Bannon's conviction, and remanding the case to the trial judge.

Bannon, a mastermind behind Trump's first presidential campaign, was fired as chief strategist in the White House in August 2017.

He was one of the loudest voices behind false accusations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

In a separate case, Bannon pleaded guilty last year to defrauding donors who gave money to a private scheme to build a wall on the US-Mexico border – a key Trump campaign promise.

Bannon also faced federal charges over the border wall scheme but received a pardon at the end of the Republican's first term in the White House.