Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony fraud for helping to defraud donors who were giving money to build a wall at the southern U.S. border.
In exchange for the guilty plea in New York criminal court, Bannon, 71, agreed to a conditional discharge and waived his right to appeal.
Bannon was sentenced to three years conditional discharge. He will not be allowed to serve as an officer or director of a charity or any charitable organization in New York state, or any fundraising or not-for-profit organization in New York state. He will not be allowed to receive or hold assets for any charitable organizations. He also cannot be arrested during that time period.
If he violates the terms of the deal, he could face between 1 1/3 to 4 years behind bars.
Judge April Newbauer asked Bannon if he understood the terms of what he agreed to. “Yes, your honor,” Bannon replied.
In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, “This resolution achieves our primary goal: to protect New York’s charities and New Yorkers’ charitable giving from fraud."
Bannon was not repentant after court, and he called Bragg and state Attorney General Letitia James an "existential threat" to the Trump administration, apparently referring to the criminal and civil cases the two had brought against the president.
"I’m calling on right now the Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin an immediate criminal investigation into Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, all of it for what they did to President Trump," Bannon said.
Bannon was first hit with charges related to the scheme in a different case by federal prosecutors in August 2020. He pleaded not guilty and was pardoned by Trump in the final hours of his first term in office.
Prosecutors from Bragg's office charged Bannon in the current case in Aug. 2022, when he was hit with six counts of money laundering, conspiracy and a scheme to defraud. Bannon pleaded not guilty at the time and called the case “partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”
The indictment charged Bannon and others of defrauding contributors who gave money for the construction of a southern border wall during Trump’s first term. Prosecutors say he swindled donors who contributed more than $15 million in 2019 as part of a fundraising drive dubbed “We Build the Wall.”
Bannon and the others had said that 100% of the donations would go toward building the wall, one of Trump’s 2016 campaign promises, and not towards the people running that effort. Federal authorities said Bannon used his nonprofit organization to receive more than $1 million of wall-building funds and used that money to pay the wall group's president.
Bannon had been scheduled to stand trial March 4. Trump could not pardon him because he was facing state charges, not federal.
Bannon spent four months in jail last year after being found guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before a House select committee investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. White House records had shown that Bannon had multiple conversations with Trump on or immediately before Jan. 6.
