Explosive Bannon fraud charges threaten to further derail Trump’s re-election bid
The arrest of Steve Bannon on charges of fraud raises more questions than can be legitimately answered at this time.
Bannon, along with three others, has been charged with illegally diverting funds donated to a crowdfunding initiative called “We Build The Wall”, set up to help fund Donald Trump’s mega-barrier on the US Mexico border. It is alleged that each of the men “defrauded hundreds of thousands of dollars” but the focus will be on Bannon who is said to have pocketed over a million dollars intended to aid the wall’s construction.
Beyond the legal matters, which will surely play out slowly through the courts, the arrest swings the national focus back on the judgement of the President, who has now seen several close associates face criminal prosecution. These include: Campaign chairman Paul Manafort (6+ years) and former personal attorney Michael Cohen (3+ years) have both seen the inside of federal prisons. Roger Stone (3 years, 4 months) only escaped the same fate when Trump commuted his sentence.
It is thought that Bannon’s deputy on the campaign, Rick Gates (45 days), has served his sentence at home due to the pandemic. Michael Flynn’s case, meanwhile, remains tied up as various courts consider the legality of the Justice Department’s late move to dismiss the charges.
Predictably, Trump has already sought to distance himself from Bannon, the man he once said he had known for “a long time”. Looking a little shellshocked, Trump spoke to reporters during a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, on Thursday. He said of Bannon: “He was involved in our campaign, he worked for Goldman Sachs, he worked for a lot of companies, he was involved likewise in our campaign and for a small part of the administration very early on. Haven’t been dealing with him at all…”
The crucial word there is “likewise” as Trump portrays Bannon’s connection as one-among-many, that of a political gadfly, briefly settling on businesses and campaigns alike. It will be a hard reality to rewrite.
When Bannon left the White House, he memorably boasted how it would aid Trump. “In many ways, I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on,” he said. “And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with.” So it proved – Bannon became the lead advocate of Trump’s brand of populism, expanding his relevance beyond US politics.
Increasingly active in Europe, Bannon has been working to establish a base in the Trisulti Charterhouse in Collepard, Italy. Resembling a villain’s lair in a Bond film (remote and sitting on the slopes of a mountain), the camp has been variously described as a “nationalist boot camp” and an “alt-right gladiator camp”. Bannon, meanwhile, has feted populists such as Salvini in Italy and Orban in Hungary, and has even claimed connections to Boris Johnson, though Johnson has dismission such suggestions as a “lefty delusion”.
The point worth underscoring here is that the former executive chairman of Breitbart News has maintained connections in the hinterland of alt-right media. Notably, it is reported that he was arrested aboard a $35 million, 150-foot yacht belonging to Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman who owns news outlet, GNews, known for pushing a right-wing agenda and conspiracy theories. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a media company linked to Bannon and Wengui is currently being “investigated by federal and state authorities”.
Occurring at the start of a particularly toxic election campaign, the arrest will naturally be seen in terms of politics, especially around the Justice Department. Given the current outrage over Postal Service cuts, the role of the US Postal Service will be highlighted in coming days. Agents from the US Postal Inspection Service made the arrest.
The investigation was conducted, however, by the Southern District of New York and it was only in June that Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the district, was forced out by Trump’s man in the Justice Department, William Barr, citing the authority of the President. It was seen as yet more interference in a department that has traditionally prided itself on its independence.
Berman originally refused to resign but only agreed when Barr accepted that Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, would replace him. It was Strauss who brought the charges against Bannon, releasing a statement reminding everybody that the SDNY “remain dedicated to rooting out and prosecuting fraud wherever we find it.” Given the febrile nature of the relationship between the office and the Trump administration, it’s difficult not to read that vow with added piquancy. After all, the Trump administration has been on collision course with the US legal establishment since 2016 and it’s only a matter of time before the two paths intersect.
Indeed, a secondary narrative of the coming election is whether the various investigations into Trump will impact the campaign and the degree to which Trump will push the Justice Department to help him win re-election. Rumours of an “October surprise” remain, with the chief candidate being the findings of an investigation by John Durham into the origins of the “Russiagate”. Trump’s game-plan is to paint the Obama/Biden administration as corrupt; effectively repeating the favourable series of events that happened in 2016 when James Comey’s late intervention revealed renewed FBI interest in Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Bannon’s arrest cuts across that narrative somewhat. Republicans will attempt to spin this “August surprise” as inconsequential, unrelated to the Trump White House, or as expected interference by the “Deep State”. Yet, whatever the reality, it does change the politics of the coming election, not least by placing an often outspoken, sometimes quixotic man, back in the national spotlight.