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Right-wing agitator Steve Bannon, the former White House advisor to Donald Trump, is set to plead not guilty Thursday to a new Manhattan indictment alleging he conspired to launder money and commit fraud through a sham «We Build the Wall» charity.
The 2018 charity had promised its GoFundMe donors that 100 percent of donations would go toward building a wall on private property along the US-Mexico border; ultimately $25 million was raised, but only three miles of fencing was built, authorities have said.
The new charges, released by the Manhattan district attorney’s office Thursday morning after Bannon turned himself in, pick up where Trump’s pardon in a related federal case left off.
Read Bannon’s new ‘We Build the Wall’ donor-scam indictment here.
Trump’s pardon, issued the night before he left office and before Bannon could face trial in federal court, made that case go away but does not protect him from Thursday’s charges, thanks in large part to a 2019 New York law that makes it tougher for presidential pardon recipients to fight related state cases.
