NEW YORK — We Build the Wall, the nonprofit prosecutors say Steve Bannon worked with to dupe donors who gave money to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, is effectively out of business and can’t afford to defend itself in a New York fraud case, a lawyer for the organization said Tuesday.
Talk of We Build the Wall’s collapse upstaged Bannon in his first court appearance since being forced to find new lawyers after his old ones said they had “irreconcilable” differences about how to proceed. Bannon’s legal line change will only prolong the case as his new lawyers get up to speed on what they said was 32 terabytes of digital evidence — equivalent to the storage on 32 of the biggest iPhones, or more than 2,000 Gmail accounts — that’s been turned over by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan, exasperated with the case’s growing calendar, scolded prosecutors for not providing evidence sooner but also blamed Bannon for squabbling with his previous set of lawyers and squandering the nearly six months that have passed since his arrest. Bannon is accused of falsely promising donors that all money given to We Build the Wall would go to building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, instead using the funds to enrich people involved in the project. Prosecutors say Bannon was involved in transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to third-party entities and using them to funnel payments to two other people involved in the scheme.
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