Steve Bannon pleaded guilty Tuesday in a New York court to defrauding donors in a border wall scheme. But Bannon, a key Trump ally and former White House adviser, will avoid any jail time after striking a deal with prosecutors.
Bannon pleaded guilty to one count of a scheme to defraud, and prosecutors under Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed to drop five other charges against him, including money laundering and conspiracy allegations. New York Judge April Newbauer sentenced Bannon to a three-year conditional discharge. He could be imprisoned if he commits a crime during that period.
The seemingly lenient deal comes about a week after US Attorney General Pam Bondi launched a “Weaponization Working Group,” which she said would examine “federal cooperation with the weaponization” by Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James “to target President Trump, his family, and his businesses.” In remarks to reporters after his plea Tuesday, Bannon urged Bondi to launch criminal investigations into Bragg and James.
Bannon last year served four months in federal prison in Connecticut for contempt of Congress; he had refused to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee. Bannon was also named last year as co-conspirator in a federal racketeering and fraud cases against Bannon’s former patron, exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui. Bannon was not charged in that case. Guo and another codefendant were convicted and remain imprisoned.
Federal prosecutors in 2020 charged Bannon and three other men with defrauding “hundreds of thousands of donors” to a crowdfunding campaign called “We Build the Wall,” which raised more than $25 million in private money to support Donald Trump’s promised border wall. Brian Kolfage, the founder and effort, had assured donors he would not take a salary, but prosecutors said that the defendants arranged to secretly pay Kolfage more than $350,000, in part with funds routed through a separate non-profit Bannon ran. Federal prosecutors alleged that Bannon—who was famously arrested aboard Guo’s $28 million yacht—also used We Build the Wall to pay his own personal expenses.
Hours before leaving office in 2021, Trump pardoned Bannon, who was a vocal supporter of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. The other three defendants, who Trump did not pardon, received prison sentences of three to five years.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office hit Bannon with similar charges in 2022, in a case Bannon has claimed was politically motivated. In a hearing in November, prosecutors in the case revealed that Bannon was initially wary of the wall fundraising effort.
“Isn’t this a scam?” Bannon wrote in an email read in court by Manhattan prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson. “You can’t build the wall for this much money.” Bannon, according to Levinson, later added: “Poor Americans shouldn’t be using hard-earned money to chase something not doable.”
Bannon changed his mind, Levinson said, after realizing that he could use the effort to make money for his own nonprofit group.
