The New York Prosecutor’s Office has charged Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s ideologue, with five charges related to the diversion of more than a million dollars of funds destined for the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico. These are two serious crimes of money laundering, two others of conspiracy and one of intrigue for fraud, also serious.
The accusations against what was the main strategist of President Donald Trump, who surrendered and voluntarily presented himself before the Prosecutor’s Office, refer to his dark participation in the We Build the Wall society: a group that financed about eight kilometers of border fences at two points in Texas and New Mexico, as part of Trump’s project to build an extensive wall that would prevent the entry of immigrants from the south.
“It is a crime to profit by lying to donors, and in New York, you will be held accountable for it,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg wrote to Bannon. The public indictment alleges that the former Trump adviser, now dedicated to producing incendiary radio podcasts, acted as the architect of a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud thousands of donors across the country, including hundreds of Manhattan residents.
The precision that the fraud included New York citizens is key in supporting the case. Because Trump, in the last hours of his mandate, took care of “preventively” pardoning Bannon from this and other possible prosecutions at the federal level. Now, prosecutors charge him with charges of state jurisdiction, allegedly perpetrated against victims of a territory, the state of New York, where the pardon of the former president no longer works.
According to the indictments, Bannon siphoned off $1 million for his “personal expenses” and contributed hundreds of thousands more to the group’s founder, Brian Kolfage, who pleaded guilty in the federal case.
In another case not covered by the former president’s pardon, Bannon was convicted in July of contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena from the committee investigating the Capitol assault. A matter for which he faces up to two years in prison, one for each crime.
“This is ironic,” Bannon said as he entered the courthouse where the session was held. And he added; “The same day that the mayor of this city has a delegation at the border, here they are persecuting people for trying to stop (immigrants) there.”
The political strategist was referring to the “investigative” visit that a municipal delegation from the Big Apple began two days ago in Texas following the decision of its governor, the extremist Republican Greg Abbott, to systematically send to New York, by bus , apart from the immigrants who arrive in the southern state every day.
