Steve Bannon was released from federal prison on Tuesday to take over the weakened right-wing media platform just a week before Election Day, according to a knowledgeable source.

Bannon, a right-wing podcast host and chief executive of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has remained a strong supporter of the former president. Even while reporting to federal prison in Connecticut in July, Bannon insisted that he would influence the presidential race from behind bars and that his “War Room” podcast would continue to energize Trump’s base.

Bannon was greeted by his daughter Maureen early Tuesday morning. He is expected to host the radio show later Tuesday morning.

He was convicted in 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He continues to appeal his conviction.

But Bannon’s MAGA megaphone was damaged in his absence while he was in prison. “War Room,” which was frequently among Apple’s Top Podcasts before Bannon went to prison, fell off the charts in early July, according to data from Podchaser. Looked at another way, the podcast was once near the top of Apple’s political podcast charts and has since fallen outside the top 25, according to Podchaser data.

There are some signs that this is escalating a bit as Bannon prepares to return.

“While we still see election denial activists coming to the show as a central hub, you see that the ‘War Room’ cannot survive without Bannon,” said Madeline Peltz, deputy director for rapid response. Media Matters is a progressive nonprofit organization that conducts comprehensive media monitoring.

Peltz predicts that Bannon will become a leading voice of election denialism if Trump arrives right after Election Day.

“I think it will take some time to bring the audience back and get them going,” Peltz said. “I don’t think a week between now and the election is enough to get this done, but you’re really going to see us all kind of kick into high gear in the post-election chaos. “I guess.”

While Bannon’s show is seen primarily as an energy source for Trump’s base, data from Edison Research’s podcast metrics found that nearly half of Bannon’s audience is made up of Republicans, but about a third of listeners are independents.

On the “War Room” podcast, a cast of hosts applauded Bannon’s return.

To celebrate Bannon’s release, well-known election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell offered a deal on MyPillow products (free pillows plus shipping and handling, with associated discount code).

“We are less than 24 hours away from Stephen K. Bannon returning a free man and preaching the gospel of MAGA here in the ‘War Room,'” Natalie Winters, one of the podcast guest hosts, said on Monday.

Winters then turned his attention to the presidential race, claiming: “This isn’t an election, it’s a voting war.” This is the kind of incendiary rhetoric that Bannon embraced and promoted as one of the first voices of the “Stop the Steal” movement in 2020.

In May, Bannon repeated the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen on his podcast, claiming they would “do anything to steal this election.”

“Bannon is one of the most talented broadcasters among his peers in terms of taking current events, extracting a grain of truth from them, and then spinning an elaborate conspiracy theory on top of that, which then becomes the fuel for that action. “It was taken up by the grassroots in response to these lies,” Media Matters’ Peltz said. “There’s really no one out there that has the same level of aptitude for this misinformation approach.”

Bannon’s team said it planned to hold a news conference in New York on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate his release.

CNN’s Sabrina Shulman, Maria Aguilar Prieto and Maria Sole Campinoti contributed to this report.

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