Bannon faces fraud, conspiracy charges in wall scheme
NEW YORK – Stephen Bannon has been charged with money laundering, fraud and conspiracy in connection with the “We Build the Wall” fundraising scheme, for which he received a federal pardon during Donald Trump’s final days in the White House.
Bannon, 68 – who is awaiting sentencing in Washington after being convicted this summer of contempt of Congress – surrendered to prosecutors in Manhattan on Thursday morning on the charges outlined in a newly unsealed state indictment and is expected to appear in court in the afternoon.
Arriving at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in a black SUV shortly after 9 a.m., Bannon stopped to shake hands with his attorneys before speaking briefly to a horde of journalists. In his remarks, he echoed past declarations that he was being prosecuted for political reasons, including in an effort to influence November’s upcoming midterm congressional elections.
“This is all about 60 days until the day!” he said, before being escorted into the building.
Bannon’s case will be handled in New York Supreme Court by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In a statement issued after the 25-page indictment was unsealed, Bragg said Bannon “acted as the architect of a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud thousands of donors across the country – including hundreds of Manhattan residents.”
The indictment focuses on Bannon’s alleged role in quietly funneling hundreds of thousands in donations from a crowdfunding website to compensate We Build the Wall’s leadership, mainly its president/chief executive. That person is not named in the filing, but has been previously identified in federal proceedings as Brian Kolfage, a disabled veteran and the founder of We Build the Wall.
Bannon is described as having orchestrated a plan to deceive donors – through emails, on the We Build the Wall website and in social media postings – telling them that Kolfage would “not take a penny” in salary and that all money collected from the site would be spent on wall construction.
Kolfage took at least $250,000 of the money in 2019, according to the indictment, which also notes that hundreds of Manhattan residents were contributors to We Build the Wall’s fundraising drive, a Trump-aligned effort that Bannon helped to orchestrate starting in December 2018.
Unlike in the federal case, Bannon is not directly accused in the state court case of pilfering funds for himself.
“Mr. Bannon lied to his donors to enrich himself and his friends,” James, the New York attorney general, said in a statement.
In the federal We Build the Wall prosecution, Bannon was yanked off a yacht by law enforcement agents in August 2020 to face his indictment, which accused him of personally pocketing $1 million from We Build the Wall.
Bannon pleaded not guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the fundraising case and was released on a $5 million bond. Trump pardoned him just before leaving office.
But presidential pardons can only apply to federal cases, making it possible for local prosecutors to bring cases covering the same ground that involve potential violations of applicable state statutes.
Three other men charged in the federal case were not pardoned. Two of them, including Kolfage, pleaded guilty in federal court. A trial for another alleged participant, Timothy Shea, ended in a mistrial by hung jury in June.
Because Bannon was granted clemency in the federal case before a conviction, there is not expected to be a viable issue of double jeopardy in his new case.
But double jeopardy – the legal principle that you cannot be tried twice for the same crime – did apply in a New York state mortgage fraud case brought against Paul Manafort, another Trump ally. That case was dismissed in December 2019 after a judge decided the charges overlapped too much with those in Manafort’s federal conviction.
Manafort was pardoned by Trump at the end of 2020.
Bannon’s pardon was among dozens of acts of clemency that came in the last hours of Trump’s presidency in January 2021. Bannon’s ties to Trump landed him in legal trouble again when the Justice Department brought a case against him for contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a subpoena for records and testimony from the House select committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Bannon was convicted in that case in late July and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 21. Each of the two counts he was convicted on carries a minimum of 30 days in jail and up to a year.