Steve Bannon Is Getting Out Of Prison — And Heading Right Back To Court
Former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon was released from prison on Tuesday, after serving four months for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Investigators on the committee were seeking Bannon’s testimony and records regarding his involvement in then-President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Bannon tried and failed to invoke executive privilege to shield himself from investigators, but that argument fell flat,since Bannon had been fired from the White House long before he consulted with Trump about Jan. 6.
Bannon had been incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, a low-security facility. He was convicted after a four-day jury trial on two counts of contempt of Congress.
Upon emerging from prison Tuesday, a visibly tanned Bannon immediately went back to throwing his support behind Trump.
“They were going to silence me and break me,” Bannon told The New York Times after his release. “I’m not broken, I’m empowered.”
He will be back in court very soon, trying to fend off another prison sentence.
Bannon is scheduled to appear on Dec. 9 in a New York City court. He stands accused of bilkingdonors who sent their cash to We Build the Wall, a group that claimed it was dedicated to fulfilling one of Trump’s 2016 campaign promises: the construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Bannon faces up to 15 years in prison if he is convicted on conspiracy, fraud and money laundering charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
An attorney for Bannon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Breitbart co-founder was first indicted in the We Build The Wall case in August 2020. He was arrested aboard a luxury yacht owned by Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire also known as Miles Guo. Bannon was charged alongside We Build The Wall co-founder and U.S. Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, Florida financier Andrew Badolato, and associate and Colorado businessman Tim Shea. (Guo was found guilty of racketeering, fraud and money laundering charges in a separate matter in July and had a close relationship with Bannon; the two once announced a plan to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.)
Trump pardoned Bannon as one of his last acts in office in January 2021, letting him slip away from the federal charges. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg then brought a state-level case on related charges, which can’t be affected by a presidential pardon.
Trump did not extend pardons to any of Bannon’s co-defendants. Kolfage and Baodolato pleaded guilty to a number of charges in April 2022, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Kolfage also pleaded guilty to tax fraud. Kolfage admitted to skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fundraising group, which had raised close to $25 million from private donors but in the end built only a few miles of wall.
Prosecutors said Kolfage promised that as founder of We Build The Wall, he would never take a salary and he told donors that 100% of the funds raised would go toward the wall’s construction.
Instead, prosecutors said, Koflage burnt through donors’ cash, spending it on cosmetic surgery, a luxury vehicle worth about $350,000, boat payments, credit card debt and other personal expenses. He was ordered to repay $17 million plus nearly $3 million in restitution when he was sentenced to just over four years in prison in April 2023.
Baodolato was accused of helping to coordinate the wire fraud conspiracy and of pocketing funds as well. He was ordered to repay just over $1.4 million plus restitution of roughly the same amount.
Prosecutors said the scheme resulted in at least $1 million flowing to Bannon, some of which he allegedly laundered through other third-party entities. Bannon, like Kolfage, is accused of deceiving donors by claiming funds would never go toward the executive salaries, but prosecutors allege Bannon specifically facilitated at least $100,00 in salary payments to Kolfage.
Bragg saidBannon would arrange it so that We Build The Wall transferred funds to Bannon’s organization and then pay out the salaries that way.
Shea was the only person charged in the schemewho went on trial. In June 2022, jurors were deadlocked in Shea’s case and a mistrial was declared. Jurors tried three times to overcome the stalemate. According to The Associated Press, a week before the mistrial, it was revealed in a note to the judge from a juror that at least one juror had expressed biased sentiments, including that they thought Shea was the target of a “government witch hunt” and that the case should never have been brought in New York.
Shea was retried by a jury and found guilty in October 2022 of wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to just over five years in prison and ordered to repay $1.8 million plus restitution in the same amount.
