NEW YORK (AP) — After spending four months in federal prison for rejecting a congressional subpoena, conservative strategist Steve Bannon had a message Tuesday for prosecutors in cases against him and President-elect Donald Trump.
‘Just wait. The hunted are about to become the hunters,” Bannon said outside a New York court, where he now faces a state conspiracy trial next month.
He got into a waiting car without explaining what ‘the hunters’ are planning.
The final trial of the longtime Trump ally is set to begin Dec. 9 — but could be postponed after a hearing Monday — in the same Manhattan courthouse where the previous and next presidents were convicted in his hush-money case. In addition, a judge on Tuesday postponed a key ruling in the hush money case for at least a week as prosecutors consider how to proceed in light of Trump’s impending presidency.
Bannon called Trump’s election victory a “judgment on all these legal matters.” The voters, he said, “rejected what happened in this court.”
Trump’s former 2016 campaign CEO and White House strategist is accused of conspiring to defraud people who contributed money to the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
He has pleaded not guilty in the case to charges including conspiracy and money laundering, reflecting an aborted federal prosecution. That was still in the early stages when Trump pardoned Bannon in 2021, during the final hours of the Republican’s first presidential term.
The following year, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James revived the case in state court, where presidential pardons do not apply. Both are Democrats.
Bannon and others involved with a charity called WeBuildTheWall Inc. told the public and donors that every dollar they gave would go toward wall construction, prosecutors say. But, they say, Bannon helped direct at least $140,000 of the nonprofit’s money to the president for an undisclosed salary.
Bannon’s suit mainly accuses him of facilitating the payouts rather than receiving them himself, though it suggests he passed on only some of the WeBuildTheWall money that came under his control.
Prosecutors told the court Tuesday that some of the money was used to pay off Bannon’s credit card bill, and they would like to be able to present evidence of those transactions at his trial.
“He saw an opportunity to use that money to advance his political agenda, and he did,” prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson said.
Attorney John Carman said Bannon was simply reimbursed for the costs he incurred while traveling to the border to help WeBuildTheWall’s case. Bannon served as chairman of the group’s advisory board.
“They’re trying to defame Mr. Bannon by showing that he took money,” Carman said. “The money he took was money he was entitled to.”
He asked Judge April Newbauer to delay the trial, saying the defense should line up financial and nonprofit experts to refute the evidence prosecutors are trying to introduce.
Newbauer scheduled a hearing Monday to decide whether to allow that evidence. She said she would decide later whether to postpone the trial.
Bannon, 70, appeared at ease during Tuesday’s hearing, which took place less than two weeks after he was released from a federal prison in Connecticut. A jury had convicted him of contempt of Congress for failing to testify and provide documents for the agency’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Bannon, who called himself a “political prisoner,” is appealing his conviction.
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Associated Press journalist David R. Martin contributed.
