Steve Bannon pleads guilty to defrauding donors over border wall construction
Steve Bannon pleaded guilty in a Manhattan criminal courtroom Tuesday to defrauding donors who gave money for the construction of a wall at the southern U.S. border.
The guilty plea was made under a deal in which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed to recommend Bannon avoid jail or prison time as long as he meets the agreement's conditions, which include a three-year prohibition on fundraising for any charitable organization with assets in New York state.
If Bannon doesn't satisfy the conditions, he could face a state prison sentence ranging from just over one year to four years in prison, according to the plea deal.
“This resolution achieves our primary goal: to protect New York’s charities and New Yorkers’ charitable giving from fraud," Bragg said in a statement. "New York has an important interest in rooting out fraud in our markets, our corporations, and our charities, and we will continue to do just that."
"We are pleased to put this matter behind Mr. Bannon so he can focus on his other work," Arthur Aidala, Bannon's defense lawyer, said in a statement. "Sadly, it was clear that he could not get a fair trial in New York county."
Prosecutors accused Bannon, a right-wing political strategist and long-time ally of President Donald Trump, of participating in a conspiracy to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to the president of We Build the Wall, an organization that solicited donations for the wall's construction. The organization said in fundraising appeals that its president, an unindicted co-conspirator, wasn't taking a penny, yet he received more than $250,000 in secret salary payments, according to the indictment.
Bannon, who was chairman of the organization's advisory board, helped funnel the money through third-party entities, including a nonprofit he controlled, according to the indictment.
Trump pardoned Bannon on similar federal charges at the end of his first presidency. The presidential pardon power doesn't extend to state charges such as the ones Bannon faced in New York.
Bannon was released from federal prison in late October after serving a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
During Trump's first term, his administration built 458 miles of what it called a "border wall system," according to U.S. News, which cited figures from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Most of that length already had some barrier in place. The U.S.-Mexico border is nearly 2,000 miles long.