Steve Bannon (71), who was released from four months in federal prison in October for defying a Congressional subpoena during a hearing on the January 6, 2021 events, pleaded “guilty” in a separate case on Feb. 11 in state court in Manhattan over felony charges of defrauding donors for his scheme to build a privately financed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. In the plea deal, prosecutors dropped charges of money laundering and conspiracy and Bannon will avoid serving active jail time if he can stay out of trouble for three years. Three others involved with Bannon’s wall effort, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea are already serving jail time.
Bannon had been the chief strategist for the Trump campaign until Trump fired him in 2018, at which point Bannon started his “We Build the Wall” fundraising efforts to build a private border wall. Bannon quickly raised $20 million, promising his donors that “100% of your money goes towards the wall,” and that the organization’s leadership would “not take a penny of compensation from these donations.” In reality court documents charge that Bannon took over $1 million, which may be why, when asked by reporters how he was feeling as he left the courthouse, Bannon said that he “felt like a million bucks.”
