Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Vice President Donald Trump, will be tried for criminal fraud in connection with a fundraising campaign for Mr. Trump’s border wall project, a New York judge has ruled. Judge April Newbauer denied Bannon’s motion to dismiss the charges, leading to a trial scheduled to begin on December 9, 2024. That date comes six weeks after Mr. Bannon’s be released from federal prison where he is serving a four-month sentence for refusing a congressional subpoena.
Mr. Bannon, 70, was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in September 2022 on charges of money laundering and conspiracy. He allegedly cheated donors who contributed more than $15 million to the “We Build the Wall” campaign.
The indictment accuses Mr. Bannon of having assured donors that all the money would be used to build the wall, when he forwarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to the chief executive of the project, Brian Kolfage, who had agreed not to receive a salary.
In December 2023, Bannon’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss the charges, claiming that the money transferred to Kolfage’s entities was used to cover reasonable expenses and asserting that it was successful the group to build parts of the wall in New Mexico and Texas. Mr. Bannon’s lawyers argued that donors’ main concern was the completion of the wall, not the financial packages behind it.
The prosecutor’s office responded on January 5, citing Mr. The involvement of Mr.
Mr. Kolfage, 42, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to federal charges of fraud and tax evasion, admitting he used donor money for personal expenses. He is currently serving a prison sentence of 4.5 years.
Bannon, who was the White House’s chief strategist in 2017 and has been prominent in the right-wing media, also faced a separate federal case in which he was found guilty of contempt of the Congress in 2022 for refusing to cooperate with the House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. He called himself a “political prisoner.”
Reuters contributed to this article.
2024-08-24 14:32:00
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