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Bannon faces a federal case that began in August when federal prosecutors in New York City accused him and three others of defrauding donors over $ 1 million as part of a campaign fundraising event allegedly aimed at supporting Trump’s border wall.
Bannon’s pardon would follow a frenzied rush during the president’s final hours in power as lawyers and key aides debated his inclusion on Trump’s outgoing leniency list. Despite their falling out in recent years, Trump was eager to forgive his former aide after recently reconnecting with him as he helped fuel Trump’s election conspiracy theories.
This was a long way from when Trump exiled Bannon from his entourage after being quoted in a book ransacking the president’s children, claiming that Donald Trump Jr. had been a “traitor” when he met a Russian lawyer and called Ivanka Trump a “stupid a brick.” These statements by Bannon prompted Trump to issue a lengthy statement saying he had “lost his mind.”
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Trump said at the time.
Things have changed in recent months as Bannon once again tried to break Trump’s inner circle by offering pre-election advice and pushing his false theories after Trump’s loss.
One concern that had blocked the pardon debate was Bannon’s possible connection to the riot by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN.
“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon promised listeners to his podcast – “War Room” – on Jan. 5, the day before the deadly siege on Capitol Hill.
The day after Bannon’s comments, Trump urged his supporters to come to Capitol Hill because the election “has been stolen from you, me and the country.”
A senior Trump adviser told CNN that both Trump and Bannon had communicated in recent weeks.
While some advisers believed it had been decided last weekend that Bannon was not getting a pardon, Trump continued to speak out on Tuesday night. Throughout the day, Trump had continued to contemplate pardons that aides believed to be settled, including for his former strategist – something he continued to go back and forth until Tuesday night, said sources at CNN.
In the end, Trump sided with Bannon.
Bannon had helped lead Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and was seen as a driving force behind the populist appeal, nationalist ideology and controversial Trump policies.
Prior to joining the campaign, Bannon was the executive chairman of Breitbart, a right-wing news site that made headlines in inflammatory newspapers. He returned to Breitbart after leaving the White House, but left in 2018.
Since Trump’s election defeat, the president has leaned more into his vast powers of pardon – granting pardons to his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, longtime ally Roger Stone and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, among others.
Among Trump’s pardons earlier in his tenure were those of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza and financier Michael Milken.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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