Since leaving the Trump administration, the former senior adviser was caught up in federal investigations and lost command of the far-right arena he once ruled.
Since he left the White House in 2017, Stephen K. Bannon has promoted himself as a political provocateur still fighting for an underclass left behind by open borders and free trade, even as he forged a financial relationship with a fugitive Chinese billionaire and traveled the world to dole out advice on running populist movements. Mr. Bannon also stayed connected to Mr. Trump, giving the impression he was quietly counseling the president from afar in recent months as his re-election campaign stumbled. But Mr. Bannon’s self-made image as a champion of people the president has called “the forgotten men and women” was shattered on Thursday when he was arrested on charges of defrauding donors to a campaign to privately fund a wall on the United States’ southern border with Mexico, one of Mr. Trump’s signature political promises. Pledging publicly not to take any of the proceeds for themselves, Mr. Bannon and the other suspects instead siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for travel, hotels, personal credit card debt and other expenses, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Mr. Bannon was arrested on the yacht of the Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui off the coast of Connecticut early Thursday, becoming the latest person linked to Mr. Trump to be indicted during his presidency. Mr. Bannon pleaded not guilty in a hearing on Thursday afternoon in Manhattan. The president sought to distance himself from the ill-fated wall fund-raising campaign that led to Mr. Bannon’s indictment. “I didn’t like that project,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday in the Oval Office. “I thought that was a project that was being done for showboating reasons.” Mr. Bannon’s arrest — nearly four years to the day after he became the head of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign — was the latest ignominious turn in his search for political relevance following his ouster from the White House in August 2017. Mr. Bannon left the White House after repeated power struggles with other senior officials, including the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and his daughter Ivanka Trump. Mr. Bannon has said he left on his own; Mr. Trump and other advisers have said he was fired. The president eventually tagged Mr. Bannon with the type of nickname he reserves for rivals — “Sloppy Steve,” a reference to Mr. Bannon’s disheveled appearance. Shortly after he left the West Wing, documents show, Mr. Bannon entered into a financial relationship with Mr. Guo, a onetime member of Mr. Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago who also goes by the name Miles Kwok. That arrangement eventually led to a $1 million contract between Mr.
