JUST IN: Steve Bannon Pleads Guilty to Defrauding MAGA Donors in Border Wall Scheme

(AP Photo/Curtis Means via Pool, File)

Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist for the Trump White House and right-wing media superstar, pleaded guilty to defrauding donors who thought they were giving money to help build a wall at the United States’ southern border on Tuesday.

Bannon had faced five felony counts and up to fifteen years in prison. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Bannon pled guilty to one count and received a three-year conditional discharge. He will face no jailtime so long as he does not reoffend.

The longtime ally of President Donald Trump had previously faced federal charged pertaining to the same scheme. In an indictment unsealed in 2020, Bannon was accused of soliciting millions of dollars to build the wall and the funneling the money to himself and associates. Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York at the time, said in a statement that Bannon and his co-conspirators had “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.”

He was pardoned by Trump on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, the final full day of Trump’s first term in office. In 2022, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged him over the same scheme.

Bannon also recently served a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena from the House of Representatives’ January 6 Committee. Before going to prison, Bannon had said he was “proud to go to prison” after being convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress