Far-right media personality Steve Bannon was no doubt relieved when his prison sentence ran its course last year, but the contempt case that put him behind bars did not represent the end of his legal difficulties.
There was still the We Build the Wall case in New York, in which Bannon was accused of helping defraud donors.
The former White House aide originally pleaded not guilty. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, Bannon ultimately changed his mind:
Steve Bannon has pleaded guilty to defrauding donors in a border wall scheme, reversing an earlier not-guilty plea after landing on an agreement with New York prosecutors that will see him avoid a prison sentence. In a New York courtroom on Tuesday, Bannon pleaded guilty to one count of scheme to defraud in the first degree. He was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge and waived his right to appeal as part of the plea deal.
For those who might need a refresher, We Build the Wall came into existence partway through Trump’s first term, and it was ostensibly created to supplement the Republican White House’s efforts to construct barriers along the U.S./Mexico border. While the Trump administration used taxpayer money to construct fencing, We Build the Wall said it would raise private funds from donors in pursuit of the same goal.
As a high-profile political player, Bannon’s role as a board member of the outfit lent it credibility. It wasn’t long before We Build the Wall raised $25 million for the private venture.
The project, however, almost immediately ran into troubles. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported, for example, that structural issues raised concerns that the conservative outfit delivered a defective product.
The whole endeavor became so problematic that Trump tried to distance himself from the group and its endeavor. He was, by all appearances, brazenly lying: The Texas Tribune reported that Trump claimed the privately funded border wall “was built to ‘make me look bad,’ even though the project’s builder and funders are all Trump supporters.”
For his part, Bannon told the public that We Build the Wall would function as “a volunteer organization.” Federal prosecutors disagreed: The Justice Department charged Bannon and his associates in August 2020, alleging that they “defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.”
In other words, according to prosecutors, We Build the Wall leaders pocketed some of the money they said would go toward the border project. We now know that at least some of those criminal allegations were true: Some of Bannon’s former partners pleaded guilty and were sent to prison. Bannon, however, effectively received a get-out-of-jail-free card from his former boss: On the evening of Jan. 19, 2021, Trump’s last full day in the White House after losing his 2020 re-election bid, the then-president pardoned Bannon. It was a temporary reprieve: The media personality was also indicted in New York, culminating in his guilty plea and agreement with prosecutors. Trump cannot pardon him Bannon for a conviction in a state criminal case. Whether Bannon’s fans hold a grudge now that he’s admitted to defrauding donors who trusted him remains to be seen. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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