Why Steve Bannon expects to be indicted (yes, again)

Steve Bannon just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. As regular readers know, it was just two years ago when federal prosecutors first filed criminal charges against Donald Trump’s former campaign strategist and White House aide. He was accused at the time of participating in an alleged wall-building scam.

Though the allegations seemed to have merit, Trump made Bannon’s problem go away: On Jan. 20, 2021, with just hours remaining in his term, the outgoing president pardoned Bannon before prosecutors could bring the case to trial.

That was not, however, the end of the political operative’s legal troubles. Bannon was indicted again after blowing off a congressional subpoena, and in July, a jury convicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress.

While he awaits sentencing, which is currently scheduled for October, Bannon is apparently poised to be indicted again. NBC News reported:

According to The Washington Post, which was first to report on the looming indictment, the prosecution will likely “mirror aspects of the federal case in which Bannon was pardoned.”

In other words, it’s time to take a fresh look at the We Build The Wall project.

For those who might need a refresher, We Build the Wall came into existence partway through Trump’s term, ostensibly created to supplement the Republican White House’s efforts to construct barriers along the U.S./Mexico border. While the Trump administration used taxpayer money to construct fencing, We Build the Wall said it would raise private funds from donors in pursuit of the same goal.

As a high-profile political player, Bannon’s role as a board member of the outfit lent it credibility. It wasn’t long before We Build the Wall raised $25 million for the private venture.

The project, however, almost immediately ran into troubles. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported, for example, that structural issues raised concerns that the conservative outfit delivered a defective product.

The whole endeavor became so problematic that Trump tried to distance himself from the group and its endeavor. He was, by all appearances, brazenly lying: The Texas Tribune reported, Trump claimed “this privately funded border wall in the Rio Grande Valley ... was built to ‘make me look bad,’ even though the project’s builder and funders are all Trump supporters.”

For his part, Bannon told the public that We Build The Wall would function as “a volunteer organization.” Federal prosecutors disagreed: The Justice Department charged Bannon and his associates in August 2020, alleging that they “defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.”

In other words, according to prosecutors, We Build the Wall leaders effectively pocketed some of the money they said would go toward the border project.

We now know that at least some of those criminal allegations were true: Bannon’s former partners in the endeavor pleaded guilty in April. The Republican operative, however, received a get-out-of-jail-free card from his former boss.

So why is Bannon poised to get indicted again as part of the same controversy? Because Trump’s pardon didn’t shield his former aide from state prosecution — and if the reporting is correct, New York prosecutors apparently believe Bannon broke state laws, too.

The accused isn’t exactly denying that we’ll soon learn of an indictment related to his border-related efforts.

“I am proud to be a leading voice on protecting our borders and building a wall to keep our country safe from drugs and violent criminals,” Bannon said a written statement last night. “They are coming after all of us, not only President Trump and myself. I am never going to stop fighting. In fact, I have not yet begun to fight. They will have to kill me first.”