Former White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon was photographed leaving federal court on July 22, 2022 in Washington, D.C (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images.)
A state judge in New York has postponed the trial of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon who is facing charges for allegedly conspiring to hoodwink donors of a supposed charity aimed at privately building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and laundering the loot.
Judge April Newbauer on Monday said that jury selection in the case will begin on Feb. 25, 2025, according to a report from The Associated Press.
Bannon, who was released from prison last month after serving a prison sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena, was initially slated to go to trial on the state charges in May 2024. However, that date has been pushed back numerous times for a variety of reasons.
“We’re not changing [the date] again,” Newbauer said in court, according to Just Security fellow Adam Klasfeld.
Bannon and his former company, We Build The Wall, have been under indictment in New York since February 2022. The six-count indictment accuses Bannon, who served as chair of the group’s advisory board, of money laundering, conspiracy, and scheme to defraud. He has pleaded not guilty.
The latest postponement reportedly came after Bannon’s defense attorneys told the court they needed more time to review and respond to new evidence from prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Newbauer ruled that prosecutors will be permitted to present evidence at trial purporting to show that funds donated to We Build The Wall were then used to pay down more than $600,000 in credit card debt incurred in 2019 by a different Bannon-led charity. The ruling came over the objections of Bannon’s defense attorneys, who reportedly argued that it was irrelevant to the current case.
Bannon was also federally indicted for his role with We Build The Wall, but Donald Trump pardoned him during the twilight of his first term as president. Bannon appeared on the same indictment as three other We Build The Wall executives: Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea.
Kolfage, a military veteran who served as the company’s president, was sentenced to four years in prison in April 2023. Badolato, who was a friend and business associate of Bannon’s, received a three-year sentence that same day.
Shea in July 2023 was convicted after a trial for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and obstruction of justice. He was subsequently sentenced to 5 years in federal prison.
Court documents filed in the federal cases laid out the mechanics of how authorities allege the defrauding scheme worked.
“Bannon and Badolato, for their parts, arranged to route money from WBTW to a separate non-profit that Bannon controlled, Citizens of the American Republic (‘COAR’), and then to Kolfage,” Kolfage’s sentencing filing states. “Kolfage never worked for COAR — Bannon’s entity was just an intermediary the defendants used to funnel money stolen from WBTW to Kolfage while concealing its original (fraudulent) source.”
Federal prosecutors also wrote that Bannon and the others “each spent the money they respectively stole from We Build the Wall on personal expenses.”
If convicted, Bannon faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
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