Steve Bannon pleads guilty to felony charge in ‘We Build the Wall’ case

MANHATTAN (CN) — Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon pleaded guilty on Tuesday in New York to one felony count related to his role in a scheme to defraud Trump supporters under the false pretense of raising funds to construct a border wall.

Bannon pleaded guilty to one count of Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, a class E felony in New York state. He will serve three years of conditional discharge as his sentence, when he’ll be prohibited from working at any New York nonprofits, using any data obtained from the scheme or committing future offenses.

Manhattan prosecutors charged Bannon with a six-count indictment in 2022 that accused him of running and promoting a fraudulent border wall fundraiser called “We Build the Wall.”

Bannon originally pleaded not guilty, and the case was set to go to trial early next month. His guilty plea on Tuesday comes just weeks after he hired veteran criminal defense attorney Arthur Aidala — who also represents disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein — to be more aggressive in his defense.

But Aidala told reporters outside of Manhattan’s criminal courthouse on Tuesday that Bannon had “no way” of getting a fair trial in New York City because of his relationship with Trump.

“As idealistic as I like to be about our criminal justice system … it was pretty obvious from recent history here that there was no way Steve Bannon would get a fair trial,” Aidala said. “Not because of the judge, but the jury pool is taken from the voter logs. And the voters in NYC in Manhattan overwhelmingly voted against Donald Trump.”

Aidala added that the defense team’s best-case scenario at trial would have been a hung jury, as they saw it as next to impossible that a Manhattan jury would unanimously acquit Bannon. He said that, while Bannon initially wanted to fight the charges, he realized that this was a fight that “he was never going to win.”

“For someone who was charged with very high level felonies, this is a spectacular disposition for him,” Aidala said.

Bannon, himself, was tight-lipped in the courtroom. He answered with a succinct “Yes, your honor,” when New York Supreme Court Justice April Newbauer asked him if he engaged in the fraudulent scheme to defraud Trump supporters.

“Do you want to say anything about your sentence?” Newbauer asked him at the end of the hearing.

“No, your honor,” Bannon replied.

But after the hearing, Bannon was fiery as ever when speaking to reporters outside the courthouse. He called for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to start an “immediate criminal investigation” into New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “for what they did to President Trump.”

Bannon did not comment on his own case.

In a statement Tuesday, Bragg celebrated Bannon’s plea agreement and reiterated the important interest New York has in “rooting out fraud in our markets, our corporations and our charities.”

“This resolution achieves our primary goal: to protect New York’s charities and New Yorkers’ charitable giving from fraud,” Bragg said. “With this felony plea, the defendant will not be able to serve as an officer, director, or in any fiduciary position, or fundraise for, any charitable associations with assets in New York State, nor can he use or sell WBTW donors’ information.”

Bannon, 71, has been a mainstay in MAGA circles for the past decade. Bannon previously served as Trump’s campaign strategist and was the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a far-right news website.

He was previously indicted for the “We Build the Wall” fraud in federal court in 2020 alongside several supposed co-conspirators. But Trump pardoned Bannon on the last day of his first presidential term, shielding his longtime ally but none of Bannon’s co-defendants from the federal case.

In that case, prosecutors accused Bannon and three others of using the “We Build the Wall” crowdfunding campaign to line their own pockets with $25 million.

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