A Manhattan judge has reportedly postponed a New York state criminal trial of Steve Bannon for conspiracy and money laundering until Feb. 25, 2025.
"A Manhattan judge POSTPONES the criminal trial of Steve Bannon until Feb. 25," MSNBC reported in an X post.
"The judge finds it necessary after ALLOWING prosecutors to introduce evidence about financial transactions involving We Build the Wall, Bannon's non-profit COAR, and Bannon's AmEx card."
Trump had pardoned Bannon hours before leaving office in January 2021, ending the federal case against Bannon, but Democrats Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James revived the case in New York state court, where presidential pardons do not apply.
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 the aborted federal prosecution.
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 said. But Bannon helped steer at least $140,000 of the nonprofit's money to its president for a secret salary, according to prosecutors.
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 wanted 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 claimed.
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."
Bannon asked Judge April Newbauer to delay the trial, saying the defense would need to line up financial and nonprofit experts to rebut the evidence that prosecutors are seeking to introduce.
Bannon has called himself a "political prisoner" jailed by President Joe Biden for around the final four months of the 2024 presidential election cycle for snubbing a Democrat-forced congressional subpoena.
"You wait. The hunted are about to become the hunters," Bannon said outside a New York court earlier this month.
Bannon cast Trump's election win as a "verdict on all this lawfare." Voters, he said, "rejected what’s going on in this court."
Information from The Associated Press was used to compile this report.