Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon said federal charges against him and three other men in an allegedly fraudulent participatory fundraising campaign are an attempt to “stop people from building” a U.S.-Mexico border wall backed by Donald Trump.

“This whole fiasco is an attempt to stop people who want to build the wall,” the former adviser to the president said as he left the U.S. District Court in New York, where he pleaded not guilty to wire transfer fraud and money laundering on Thursday. He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

He made the brief statement as he exited the federal court in Manhattan and entered a black Cadillac Escalade.

Artist’s sketch showing former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listening to Judge Stewart Aaron as he appears on video during his indictment hearing for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering inside the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan, New York on August 20, 2020 (REUTERS)

Its security has been set at $5 million, with $1.75 million in cash and real estate assets. He must surrender his passport and is only allowed to travel to certain parts of New York, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and Connecticut for business purposes. He is also prohibited from boarding private jets and yachts without court authorization.

He was arrested Thursday morning at 7:15 a.m. by agents of the New York Field Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service while on board a Chinese billionaire’s yacht off the coast of Connecticut.

Mr. Bannon and three other men involved in a “We Build the Wall” charity – Brian Kolfage, Andy Badolato and Timothy Shea – were charged Thursday in one of the most politically charged cases related to the president’s campaign in the hands of the acting U.S. attorney. Audrey Strauss, who entered the role after her predecessor Geoffrey Berman was abruptly fired by Trump in June.

The four men were arrested Thursday and each charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

“To induce donors to donate to the campaign, Kolfage and Bannon – each of whom, as detailed here, exercised significant control over We Build the Wall – repeatedly and falsely assured the public that Kolfage ‘would not take a penny in salary or compensation’ and that ‘100% of the funds raised’ ‘would be used for the stated purpose of the participatory fundraising campaign,’ according to a 24-page indictment filed in the U.S. District Court in New York and unsealed Thursday.

“As Bannon said publicly, “we are a volunteer organization,” “according to the indictment. ” These representations were false. »

The men “defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretext that all that money would be spent on construction” along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. attorney Strauss said in a release.

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Instead, the campaign, which raised more than $25 million, was used to finance their own lavish lifestyle through “false bills and money-laundering accounts” to cover up their crimes, according to Chief Inspector Philip R. Bartlett.

Bannon reportedly took $1 million from the campaign, channeled through a non-profit organization under his control. He would have used “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to cover his personal expenses.

Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Kolfage, a veteran of the US Air Force, “secretly took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds” raised by We Build the Wall.

The system involved funnelling campaign payments to a non-profit organization and a shell company under Shea’s control, using fraudulent invoices and “dummy supplier agreements” to conceal their fraud, the prosecutors said.

The president immediately sought to distance himself from the indictments.

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted that “President Trump is not involved in this project and felt that it was only to present and perhaps raise funds.

“I feel very bad,” the president said Thursday following reports that his former assistant had been arrested. “I haven’t dealt with him in a long time, as most people in this room know. He was involved in our campaign… and for a small part of the administration, very early on. dealt with him. »

Bannon, a former executive chairman of Breitbart, served as the president’s chief strategist at the White House, but left the administration within the president’s first eight months. He previously served as the campaign’s chief campaign manager.

We Build the Wall began as a massive GoFundMe campaign, circumventing the president’s campaign promise and the legal and congressional hurdles for a massive border wall project with a privately funded effort.

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The campaign was supported by Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials and by the son of President Donald Trump Jr., who called it “private enterprise at its best” in 2018.

“Brian thanked you very much for all your sacrifices, for doing this and really showing what capitalism is all about,” he said at a We Build the Wall event that year. “It’s private enterprise at its best. Doing better, faster, cheaper than anything else. »

About a month after criticizing the effort, the president told reporters at the White House Thursday that he knew “nothing about the project except that when I read about it, I didn’t like it. »

I said, “It’s for the government”. It is not for individuals”. “And it sounded like showboating to me,” he said. “And I think I let my opinion be expressed very strongly at the time. »