Conservative podcaster and former White House aide Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to defrauding supporters of President Donald Trump in New York on Tuesday.
The charges against him are related to a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters who contributed over $15 million to an effort that was ostensibly aimed at building a wall on the southern border using private funds.
Bannon, 71, was sentenced to three years of conditional discharge after pleading guilty, meaning he will not serve any time in prison. The sentence was part of a plea agreement by Bannon.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge April Newbauer also barred the conservative provocateur from serving in an official capacity or fundraising for charitable groups and not-for-profit corporations that hold assets in New York.
Bannon pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree scheme to defraud. He originally was charged in 2022 with six criminal counts of money laundering, conspiracy, and a scheme to defraud.
The guilty plea came three weeks before the scheduled start of Bannon’s trial in the case.
Bannon served as a senior White House adviser to Trump during his first term in office. He was initially charged in federal court related to the “We Build the Wall” organization. He and three others were alleged to have pocketed the donations for their personal use. However, Trump pardoned Bannon on the last day of his first term.
The four were charged with money laundering and conspiracy after being accused of deceiving donors who had contributed millions of dollars to the fundraising drive in 2019.
According to the indictment, Bannon told donors he was "kind of a volunteer" to the We Build the Wall non-profit, which raised more than $25m (£22m) from thousands of people.
Despite his vow that "not a penny" would be pocketed by him or others, he diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars to two associates, prosecutors alleged.
The prosecution claimed in 2022 that Bannon and his partners raised the money by falsely claiming none of the founders of the organization would be paid a salary from the donations. Bannon has maintained that the case against him is motivated by politics given his proximity to the president. He characterized the charges as “nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”
The NY claim was bait and switch. The issue was whether money collected to build the wall should have been refunded or documented consent obtained from all donors to spend those funds on something else when the ability to continue building wall was frustrated by feds. Bannon…
— Ronald Nelson (@realNel727) February 11, 2025
Despite Trump’s pardon, New York pursued legal action against Bannon for the scheme.
Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress in 2024 for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Select Jan. 6 Subcommittee to testify about the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.
Bannon called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, “for what they did to President Trump.”
He further stated that the “existential threat to his administration is the queen of lawfare Letitia James.”
Bannon’s lawyer still contends that Bannon never pocketed any of the money coming from donations for the wall project.
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