NEW YORK (AP) — After spending four months in federal prison for snubbing a congressional subpoena, conservative strategist Steve Bannon had a message Tuesday for prosecutors in cases against him and President-elect Donald Trump.
“You wait. The hunted are about to become the hunters,” Bannon said outside a New York court where he's now facing a state conspiracy trial as soon as next month.
He stepped into a waiting car without elaborating on what “the hunters” intend to do.
The longtime Trump ally's latest trial is set to start Dec. 9 — but could be postponed after a hearing Monday — at the same Manhattan courthouse where the past-and-next president was convicted in his hush money case. Separately, a judge Tuesday delayed a key ruling in the hush money case for at least a week as prosecutors ponder how to proceed in light of Trump's impending presidency.
Bannon cast Trump's election win as a “verdict on all this lawfare.” Voters, he said, “rejected what’s going on in this court.”
The former Trump 2016 campaign CEO and White House strategist is charged with conspiring to dupe people who contributed money to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy and money laundering in the case, which mirrors an aborted federal prosecution. That was in its early stages when Trump pardoned Bannon in 2021, during the last 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 don't 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 to the wall-building effort, prosecutors say. But, they say, Bannon helped steer at least $140,000 of the nonprofit's money to its president for a secret salary.
Bannon's indictment mostly accuses him of facilitating the payouts, not getting them himself, though it suggests he passed along only a portion of the WeBuildTheWall money that came under his control.
Prosecutors told a court Tuesday that some of the money was used to pay Bannon's credit card bill, and they'd like to be able to present evidence of those transactions at his trial.
“He saw an opportunity to use that money to forward his political agenda, and he did that,” prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson said.
Defense lawyer John Carman said Bannon was simply reimbursed for expenses he incurred while traveling to the border to help WeBuildTheWall's cause. Bannon chaired the group's advisory board.
“They’re attempting to smear Mr. Bannon by showing that he took money,” Carman said. “The money that he was taking was money that he was entitled to take.”
He asked Judge April Newbauer to delay the trial, saying that the defense would need to line up financial and nonprofit experts to rebut the evidence that prosecutors are seeking to introduce.
Newbauer scheduled a hearing Monday to decide whether to allow that evidence. She said she'd decide afterward whether to postpone the trial.
Bannon, 70, appeared to be at ease during Tuesday's hearing, which came less than two weeks after he was freed from a federal prison in Connecticut. A jury had convicted him of contempt of Congress for not giving a deposition and not providing documents for the body's investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
Bannon, who had called himself a “political prisoner,” is appealing his conviction.
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Associated Press journalist David R. Martin contributed.
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