Bannon, 68, was indicted on six counts in connection with a fundraising effort known as “Building the Wall” to help build Trump’s signature wall along the US-Mexico border. In an indictment made public, Bannon was charged with two counts of money laundering, three counts of conspiracy and one count of wire fraud. A co-defendant, WeBuildTheWall Inc., was charged in the indictment with the same six counts. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York State Attorney General Letitia James are expected to provide more details on the state charges at a press conference at 1:00 PM ET. Bannon is expected to be arraigned around 2:15 p.m According to the indictment, Bannon hid how the unit’s CEO received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor money, despite the promise that he would not take a salary. The CEO has been identified in court documents as Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who pleaded guilty in April to federal conspiracy and tax fraud charges and is awaiting sentencing. “Stephen Bannon acted as the architect of a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud thousands of donors across the country,” Bragg said in a statement. “It’s a crime to make a profit by lying to donors.”
Thanks to a federal case from Trump
Bannon, Kolfage and two other men were charged by federal officials in August 2020 with defrauding donors in the same $25 million US fundraising effort. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to federal indictment, including charges he ran off nearly $1 million in personal expenses, but his indictment was dismissed after Trump pardoned him in the final days of his presidency in January 2021. Kolfage pleaded guilty in April to federal wire fraud and tax fraud and is awaiting sentencing. Another defendant, Andrew Badolato, also pleaded guilty to the scheme, and a judge in June declared a mistrial in the case of another defendant, Timothy Shea. A protester holds a sign with an image of former US President Donald Trump outside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office on Thursday. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters) Presidential pardons cover federal charges and do not bar state prosecutions. Double jeopardy — which prevents a person from facing two separate trials for the same crimes — does not apply to the Bannon case because there was never a verdict or trial on the federal charges. In a statement Tuesday night, Bannon called the New York case “nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.” He made similar comments to reporters as he entered the courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday.
Bannon is awaiting sentencing in a separate case
Bannon has championed right-wing populism for more than a decade, starting as an executive at Breitbart.com, where the site attacked moderate Republicans and immigration practices as they existed before the Trump presidency, as well as highlighting stories of urban crime. He signed on to be Trump’s last campaign chairman in 2016, succeeding Paul Manafort, who eventually served prison time on a string of bank fraud charges. Bannon spent the first months of Trump’s presidency as a White House adviser before leaving in August 2017. He now runs the popular War Room podcast and often hosts guests who deny that Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Bannon was convicted earlier this summer in a separate case for refusing to respond to a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. He was convicted of two counts, each of which carries a prison sentence of 30 days to a year. He will be sentenced for this case on October 21. Bragg’s office is also overseeing an investigation into Trump’s namesake company, the Trump Organization, which is headed to trial next month. Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, its chief financial officer, pleaded guilty in August to a variety of tax charges.
