One of former President Donald Trump’s chief advisors, Steve Bannon, is facing charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York State for money laundering and conspiracy to defraud contributors. According to Politico’s Julian Shen-Berro, Bannon is alleged, through a fundraising initiative called We Build the Wall, to have collected money in 2019 from donors to support building a wall along the U.S/Mexico border. Trump made a campaign promise to build such a wall and to make Mexico pay for it, but Trump never achieved that goal. We Build the Wall collected15 million dollars towards that end. 

However, it appears that Bannon used some of the donated money to pay a salary to the president of We Build The Wall, Brian Kolfage, a former Air Force veteran, even though Kolfage publicly insisted that he would receive no compensation for his role in developing the fund. The charge is that Bannon used the rest of the money for personal use. Ironically, Trump pardoned Bannon before leaving office in January of 2021 over these exact charges, at the federal level, brought by the Department of Justice. But that doesn’t pardon Bannon from charges made by New York state, where it appears that Bannon or one of his co-defendants were living at the time. The pardon demonstrates that both Trump and Bannon believed that the federal charges were accurate and could jeopardize Bannon. Bannon could face up to 15 years in jail and heavy financial penalties if convicted. Of course, like many corruption cases, the donors who contributed to the effort will probably never see their money again…or a completed wall.