Michael McCoy | Reuters Steve Bannon’s criminal defense attorney said the former senior Trump White House adviser is traveling to New York on Wednesday to prepare to surrender in the morning to face charges in a new indictment. The lawyer, Robert Costello, said Bannon would surrender to authorities at 9 a.m. Thursday. Asked for details on the criminal charges Bannon is expected to face, Costello told CNBC via email: “The indictment is sealed.” The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which will prosecute the case, is investigating Bannon for possible violations of New York state criminal laws in connection with more than $25 million in funds raised for an effort to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Bannon was arrested in August 2020 on federal charges along with three other men connected to that effort, which prosecutors say defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors. Federal prosecutors said at the time that Bannon received $1 million in funds from We Build the Wall and that to divert that money he used a separate nonprofit he had already created to allegedly promote “economic nationalism and American supremacy ». Bannon never went to trial in this federal case because he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump just before Trump left office in January 2021. Presidential pardons do not protect people from prosecution on state charges. In a statement Tuesday to NBC News, Bannon said New York “has now decided to bring false charges against me 60 days before the midterm elections.” “This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system,” he said.
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Read more about CNBC’s political coverage: “I am proud to be a leading voice in protecting our borders and building a wall to keep our country safe from drugs and violent criminals,” Bannon said in that statement. “They’re coming after all of us, not just President Trump and me. I’m never going to stop fighting. In fact, I haven’t started fighting yet. They’re going to have to kill me first.” The New York case is the second pending criminal action Bannon faces. In July, he was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by Trump supporters.
