Steve Bannon has pleaded guilty to fraud in a deal with New York prosecutors that will keep him out of jail, admitting in a Manhattan criminal courtroom to bilking donors to a spurious campaign to build parts of Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Bannon was accused of defrauding donors and helping pocket tens of thousands of dollars in a scheme supporting the construction of a few miles of U.S.-Mexico border in 2019, which landed his co-defendants in a parallel federal case in prison with millions of dollars owed in restitution.
Inside a criminal courtroom Tuesday, Bannon pleaded guilty to a single count of scheme to defraud — one of five counts against him. He will not face any jail time and he will not have to pay any restitution of his own to donor victims. A three-year conditional discharge sentence prohibits him from fundraising or working with any nonprofit organizations in the state.
New York Justice April Newbauer asked Bannon whether he agrees that he acted “principally and in concert with others” to engage in a “scheme with intent to defraud” by “false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises.”
“Yes, your honor,” he replied.
Outside the courthouse, Trump’s former adviser — whose “flood the zone” mantra has fueled the president’s campaign and administration and reshaped a far-right media environment — attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, two prosecutors who also brought criminal charges and civil cases against Trump.
Bannon called the prosecutors an “existential threat” to Trump’s agenda and labeled James a “queen of welfare.”
He called on U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi “to begin an immediate criminal investigation” into Bragg and James for “all of what they did to President Trump,” who was convicted by a unanimous jury last year on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
A deal with Bannon was reached less than a month before a trial was set to examine whether Bannon deceived donors to the “We Build the Wall” campaign, echoing charges brought by federal prosecutors in a case that fell apart with Trump’s presidential pardon in 2021.
We Build the Wall raised more than $25 million to help privately construct a piece of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but prosecutors accused the group’s officers of funneling thousands of dollars into their own pockets.
In 2020, federal agents arrested Bannon while he was on a yacht off the Connecticut coast. Trump’s last-minute pardon before the end of his first term in the White House derailed the case against him.
His co-defendant in that case, Brian Kolfage, was later sentenced to more than four years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, among other charges.
In 2022, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Bannon in a scheme that prosecutors claim netted “$15 million from thousands of donors across the country based on false promises.”
Bannon initially pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, conspiracy and scheme to defraud.
Outside the courthouse on Tuesday, Bannon’s attorney Arthur Aidala claimed his client would never get a fair trial in New York, repeating baseless allegations that a sworn jury would be unfairly biased against Republicans.
“This was easily a case that could’ve gone sideways,” he told reporters. “He wants a fight … But he realized that maybe this was a fight because of the forum he was in, he was never gonna win.”
Despite his client receiving yet another felony conviction, the outcome from the We Build the Wall case is “spectacular,” Aidala said.
Bannon did, however, spend four months in prison after he was convicted of contempt of Congress for dodging subpoenas from the House select committee investigating January 6, which spent months probing the events surrounding the Capitol attack fueled by Trump’s election lies.
He walked out of federal prison days before Election Day last year following a four-month sentence.
