Stephen K. Bannon, the combative and calculating strategist who helped elect Donald J. Trump to the White House and became one of the most influential voices of the hard right, was released from federal prison early Tuesday.
He wasted little time reprising his role as one of the leading provocateurs of the former president’s political movement.
“I’m not broken, I’m empowered,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview shortly after his release at 3:15 a.m. from a low-security prison in Danbury, Conn.
He predicted a bitter legal battle after Election Day that could last for weeks or months before a winner is clear. “If people think American politics has been divisive before, you haven’t seen anything,” he said.
Mr. Bannon, 70, had been serving a four-month sentence on contempt charges for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking information about the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Asked on Tuesday whether he thought it had been worth a prison sentence to not testify before Congress, he said: “1,000 percent.”
“If you’re not prepared to go to prison to fight for your country,” he said, “you’re not prepared to fight for your country.”
In prison, his access to the internet was restricted, silencing his political megaphone. Mr. Bannon’s primary form of communication with the outside world was through email, using a service for inmates of federal correctional facilities that can be monitored and that limits the number of people a prisoner can contact.
He did manage to get an occasional word out to the news media. In July, before President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Mr. Bannon told the conservative website Breitbart in an email interview that House Republicans should investigate what he said amounted to a “cover-up” of Mr. Biden’s mental decline.
Mr. Bannon’s reach gives him few peers in right-wing media — and fewer still who understand how to tap into and inflame the fears and suspicions of Trump supporters. Before Mr. Bannon’s imprisonment, the Podcharts ranking service routinely listed his daily podcast “War Room” among the country’s top 10 political podcasts.
This is a developing story.