Steve Bannon surrenders to authorities

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Steve Bannon has surrendered Thursday morning to authorities and faces New York state money laundering and conspiracy charges related to an effort to raise money to fund construction of a wall along the southern US border.

The former Donald Trump aide is expected to plead not guilty Thursday when arraigned later Thursday, his attorney Robert Costello told CNN.

The state charges, which have been returned in an indictment, are based on the same conduct Bannon was charged with by federal prosecutors in 2020 that alleged he and three others had defrauded donors in the border wall effort, which raised more than $25 million.
Presidential pardons do not apply to state investigations, however.

Bannon appeared to blame his situation on political motivations.

The Manhattan district attorney's office launched a criminal investigation into Bannon's "We Build the Wall" crowd-fundraising activities early last year after then-President Trump pardoned Bannon on federal fraud charges relating to the same alleged scheme.

Bannon had been federally charged with diverting more than $1 million to pay an alleged co-conspirator and cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses. Prosecutors alleged that the donors, including some in New York, were falsely told that all the money contributed would go toward the construction effort.

In recent months, several people close to Bannon were brought before the state grand jury.

Bannon issued a statement late Tuesday, in part calling the indictment "phony charges" and "nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system."