Bannon pleads guilty in border wall fraud case, avoids jail time
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon pleaded guilty Tuesday in his fraud case related to a privately built border wall — a deal that will allow him to avoid jail time.
Bannon, a right-wing media commentator known for his "War Room" podcast, was indicted in 2020 and accused of helping funnel money from a charity that would collect donations from people to privately build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to court filings, he allegedly used hundreds of thousands of dollars from those donations for his own personal expenses and to pay the organization’s co-founder.
Bannon was arrested aboard a luxury yacht and was pardoned by President Trump in the final few hours of his first term. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought new charges a year later, The Associated Press reported.
We Build the Wall co-founder Brian Kolfage was sentenced to four years in prison in April 2023.
An attorney representing one of the three other co-defendants in the case said Bannon was the key beneficiary of the plot. He was accused of taking more than $1 million through the scheme and paying some of it to Kolfage.
Under the rules of the plea bargain, Bannon is barred from fundraising or serving in a leadership or fiduciary position for charitable organization in New York state. He’s not able to use, sell or possess any data gathered from donors who gave money to the wall-building organization in the past.
When Bannon left the courtroom Tuesday, he was asked how he felt. The key Trump ally replied that he felt like "a million bucks.” He later called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Bannon’s case was scheduled to go to trial March 4.
The former White House strategist was also convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 after refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He served a four-month prison sentence last year in Connecticut. Bannon's contempt charges are among those floated for potential Trump pardons in his second term.
The Associated Press contributed.
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