Steve Bannon’s trial in border wall fundraising case set for December, after his ongoing prison term
FILE - Steve Bannon speaks outside Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, July 1, 2024, in Danbury, Conn. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, file)
While Steve Bannon serves a four-month federal prison term, the conservative strategist now has a December date for a different trial in New York, where he’s charged with scheming to con donors who gave money to build a border wall with Mexico.
With Bannon excused from court because of his incarceration, a judge Tuesday scheduled jury selection to start Dec. 9 in the “We Build the Wall” case.
The trial had been expected as soon as September but was postponed because Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, is in a federal penitentiary in Connecticut. Bannon is behind bars because he was convicted of defying a congressional subpoena related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He’s due to be released in late October.
The judge in the New York case, April Newbauer, said she wanted to allow enough time for Bannon to meet with his lawyers and review trial exhibits and things she described as “difficult to go over during counsel visits in prison.”
After the jury is seated and opening statements are given, testimony is expected to take about a week.
Bannon’s lawyers, John Carman and Joshua Kirshner, declined to comment after court.
Prosecutors say Bannon helped funnel over $100,000 to a co-founder of the nonprofit WeBuildTheWall Inc. who was getting a secret salary, though Bannon and others had promised donors that every dollar would be used to help construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“All the money you give goes to building the wall,” Bannon said at a June 2019 fundraiser, according to the indictment. It doesn’t accuse him of pocketing any of the money himself, but rather of facilitating the clandestine payouts.
Bannon, 70, has pleaded not guilty to money laundering and conspiracy charges. He has called them “nonsense.”
Yet the accusations have dogged him from one court to another. He initially faced federal charges, until that prosecution was cut short when Trump pardoned Bannon in the last hours of his presidential term.
But presidential pardons apply only to federal charges, not state ones. And Bannon found himself facing state charges when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, took up the “We Build the Wall” matter.
Three other men didn’t get pardoned and are serving federal prison time in the case. Two pleaded guilty; a third was convicted at trial.
Meanwhile, a federal jury in Washington convicted Bannon in 2022 of contempt of Congress, finding that he refused to answer questions under oath or provide documents to the House investigation into the Capitol insurrection.
Bannon’s attorneys argued that he didn’t refuse to cooperate but that there had been uncertainty about the dates for him to do so.
An appeals court panel upheld his conviction, and the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute bid to delay his prison term while his appeal plays out further.
He turned himself in July 1 to start serving his time, calling himself a “political prisoner” and slamming Attorney General Merrick Garland.