Bannon faces a federal case that began in August, when federal prosecutors in New York accused him and three others of defrauding donors in more than a million dollars as part of a fundraising campaign supposedly aimed at supporting Trump’s border wall. .
Bannon’s pardon would follow a frantic rush during the president’s final hours in office, while lawyers and top advisers debated his inclusion on Trump’s exit clemency list. Despite his disagreement in recent years, Trump was eager to forgive his former aide after recently reconnecting with him while helping Trump’s conspiracy theories about the election.
It was very different from when Trump exiled Bannon from his inner circle after he was quoted in a book that criticized the president’s children, claiming that Donald Trump Jr. had been a “traitor” when he met with a Russian lawyer and labeled Ivanka Trump as “stupid as a brick.” These statements by Bannon prompted Trump to issue a long statement saying he had “lost his head”.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” said Trump at the time.
Things have changed in the past few months as Bannon tried to breach Trump’s inner circle once again, offering advice before the election and promoting his false theories after Trump had lost.
One concern that paralyzed the debate over forgiveness was Bannon’s possible connection to the revolt of Trump supporters at the United States Capitol earlier this month, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN.
“Hell will start tomorrow,” Bannon promised listeners to his podcast – “War Room” – on January 5, the day before the deadly Capitol siege.
The day after Bannon’s comments, Trump urged his supporters to go to the Capitol because the election “was stolen from you, me and the country”.
A senior Trump adviser told CNN that Trump and Bannon had communicated in recent weeks.
While some advisers believed that it was decided last weekend that Bannon was not getting forgiveness, Trump continued to raise Tuesday night. Throughout the day, Trump continued to contemplate pardons that advisers believed had been settled, including for his former strategist – something he continued to come and go on Tuesday night, sources told CNN.
Ultimately, Trump sided with Bannon.
Bannon helped direct Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and was credited as a driving force behind Trump’s populist appeal, nationalist ideology and controversial policies.
Before joining the campaign, Bannon was the executive president of Breitbart, a right-wing news website that traffics in incendiary headlines. He returned to Breitbart after leaving the White House, but left again in 2018.
Since Trump’s defeat in the elections, the president has leaned even further on his broad powers of forgiveness – granting pardons to his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, longtime ally Roger Stone and former campaign president Paul Manafort , among others.
Among Trump’s pardons early in his term were those for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza and financier Michael Milken.
This is a last-minute story and will be updated.