Steve Bannon pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a fraud charge related to duping donors who gave money to a private effort to build a wall along the US southern border, though he will not face jail time.
Bannon, a conservative strategist and longtime ally of Donald Trump, reached a plea agreement over his role in a fundraising effort known as “We Build the Wall”, which solicited donations on the premise of building a wall along the US-Mexico border. Prosecutors said Bannon used the money to enrich himself and others involved.
He received three years of conditional discharge, which requires that he stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment.
When asked how he was feeling as he left the courtroom on Tuesday, Bannon said: “Like a million bucks.”
Bannon was originally indicted on federal charges in 2020, along with several others involved in the fundraising efforts. But in 2021, a Trump pardon wiped away the federal charges.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office then took up the case and indicted Bannon in 2022 on state charges of money laundering, conspiracy and fraud related to the “We Build the Wall” scheme.
The state charges, led by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, mirrored the federal indictment.
Bannon was accused of deceiving donors in 2019 who reportedly contributed more than $15m to the “We Build the Wall” campaign.
Prosecutors allege that he falsely promised donors that all contributions would be used for the campaign to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, but say that instead, the money was used to enrich Bannon and others involved.
In 2022, Bannon, 71, pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy and the case was scheduled to go to trial on 4 March.
In November, Judge April Newbauer ruled prosecutors could show jurors certain evidence, including an email they say shows Bannon was concerned the fundraising effort was “a scam”.
Bannon, who decried the case as a “political persecution”, had reportedly been planning an aggressive defense strategy and recently hired a new team of attack dog lawyers who sought to portray the case to jurors as a selective and malicious prosecution.
In January, Bannon’s lawyers filed papers asking Newbauer to throw out the case, calling it an “unconstitutional selective enforcement of the law”. The judge had been expected to rule on that on Tuesday before Bannon’s plea deal made the request moot.
The “We Build the Wall” campaign, launched in 2018 after Trump fired Bannon as his chief strategist, quickly raised more than $20m and privately built a few miles of fencing along the border.
It soon ran into trouble with the International Boundary and Water Commission, came under federal investigation and drew criticism from Trump, the Republican whose policy the charity was founded to support.
Early in the fundraising campaign, Bannon pooh-poohed it, prosecutors said at a November hearing.
“Isn’t this a scam? You can’t build the wall for this much money,” Bannon wrote in an email, according to prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson. He said Bannon went on to add: “Poor Americans shouldn’t be using hard-earned money to chase something not doable.”
Two other men involved in the project, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2022 and were sentenced to prison. A third defendant, Timothy Shea, was convicted and also sentenced to prison.
Bannon spoke to reporters after leaving the courthouse on Tuesday, and called on the new US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to begin an immediate criminal investigation into James and Bragg.
Just days ago, Bondi ordered the justice department to investigate what the president called the “weaponization of prosecutorial power”.
Bondi last week formed a “Weaponization Working Group” at the justice department to examine cases she said appear to have been motivated by “political objectives or other improper aims”, including Bragg’s pursuit of criminal charges against Trump.
Bannon’s guilty plea on Tuesday is his second criminal conviction. Last year, Bannon went to prison in an unrelated case, serving four months at a federal lockup in Connecticut for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021. He was released in October, a week before the US election.
