Steve Bannon pleads guilty to fraud in border wall scheme but avoids jail Former Trump adviser admits to defrauding donors to We Build the Wall scheme.
Steve Bannon has pleaded guilty to fraud in a deal with New York prosecutors that will keep him out of jail, admitting in a Manhattan criminal courtroom to bilking donors to a spurious campaign to build parts of Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall.
A deal was reached less than a month before a trial was set to examine whether Bannon deceived donors to the “We Build the Wall” campaign, echoing charges brought by federal prosecutors in a case that fell apart with Trump’s presidential pardon in 2021.
Bannon was accused of defrauding donors and pocketing tens of thousands of dollars as part of a U.S.-Mexico border wall scheme in 2019, which landed his co-defendants in a parallel federal case in prison with millions of dollars owed in restitution.
Trump’s former adviser, whose “flood the zone” mantra has fueled the president’s campaign and administration and reshaped a far-right media environment, appeared in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday to enter a guilty plea to a single count of “scheme to defraud.”.
