Steve Bannon pleads guilty in border wall case and avoids jail time

Steve Bannon, a long-time ally of President Donald Trump, has pleaded guilty to defrauding donors who paid for a private scheme for a wall on the US-Mexico border.

Bannon, 71, received a sentence of conditional discharge for three years, which means he will not serve jail time under a plea agreement.

The US Department of Justice accused Bannon and three others of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with the "We Build the Wall" campaign, which raised $25m (£19m).

Bannon's lawyer said on Tuesday he didn't personally pocket any of the money.

The "We Build the Wall" campaign was launched by Bannon and the three others to use donations to build segments of the border barrier - whose construction was a key Trump promise during the 2016 election - on private land.

The four were charged with money laundering and conspiracy after being accused of deceiving donors who had contributed millions of dollars to the fundraising drive in 2019.

According to the indictment, Bannon told donors he was "kind of a volunteer" to the We Build the Wall non-profit, which raised more than $25m (£22m) from thousands of people.

Despite his vow that "not a penny" would be pocketed by him or others, he diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars to two associates, prosecutors alleged.

Under the agreement, Bannon entered a guilty plea to just the first degree scheme to defraud charge.

The sentence also means he cannot serve as the director of any non-profit in New York or raise money for charities with assets in the state.

"This resolution achieves our primary goal: to protect New York's charities and New Yorkers' charitable giving from fraud," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Bannon attacked Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling them "existential threats" to the Trump administration.

James was not involved in Bannon's case, but brought a lawsuit against Trump for civil fraud and won a nearly half-billion dollar judgment against him.

Bannon also faced federal charges over the wall campaign after he was indicted by a federal grand jury, but the prosecution came to a halt after Trump pardoned him in the final hours of his first White House term.

Some of his co-conspirators, who did not receive pardons, were ultimately sentenced to prison.

The president's pardon authority applies only to federal matters, and charges in the current case were filed by in a New York State court in September 2022.

Bannon, a former investment banker, was the driving force behind the right-wing Breitbart News website before serving in the Trump White House as chief strategist.

His influence was discernible in key decisions such as the mid-2017 US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

He left the post in August 2017 and returned to Breitbart. He stepped down from that post after he was quoted in a book criticising Trump and one of his sons.

At the time Trump said: "Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind".

He also served four months in a federal prison in 2024 after being found guilty in 2022 of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to appear before the committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.