NEW YORK (AP) — Steve Bannon’s trial on charges that he duped donors who gave money to build a wall along the U.S. southern border will start a week later than scheduled, a judge said Wednesday, after the conservative rabble-rouser hired new lawyers to pursue an aggressive defense strategy.
Bannon, a political strategist and longtime ally of President Donald Trump, had been scheduled to stand trial Feb. 25 in the “We Build the Wall” case in state court in New York. It will now start March 4, Judge April Newbauer said.
Newbauer agreed to the delay after summoning Bannon to court to quiz him about his decision to shake up his legal team. She rejected new defense lawyer Arthur Aidala’s request for a month-long postponement.
“I’ve been smeared by a political prosecution — persecution — for years, and I need someone who’s a little more aggressive,” Bannon told the judge during a brief hearing in Manhattan. “I need every tool in the tool box.”
“Well, every tool in the tool box does not include delaying the trial,” Newbauer said.
Aidala said Bannon hired him and his firm — including former prosecutor John Esposito and retired Judge Barry Kamins — as attack dogs who are on board with his plan to portray the case to jurors as a selective and malicious prosecution.
Bannon said he started shopping for new lawyers after he was "shocked" by Newbauer’s ruling in November that prosecutors could show jurors certain evidence, including an email they say shows Bannon was concerned the fundraising effort was “a scam.”
Aidala, a prominent New York City defense lawyer, told the judge that Bannon approached him about representation in December and, after initially declining, said he agreed to do so when his schedule freed up.
Aidala also represents Harvey Weinstein in his pending rape retrial, also in state court in Manhattan. No date has been set, but the lawyer had been suggesting that Weinstein’s trial go first in “the interest of humanity,” citing the disgraced movie mogul’s declining health.
“They know that Mr. Weinstein is dying of cancer and is an innocent man right now in the state of New York,” Aidala argued at Wednesday’s hearing. He said he pleaded to prosecutors: “Can I try this dying man’s case first?”
Newbauer said that after consulting with the judge in that case, Curtis Farber, it didn't seem realistic to shuffle the order. But, noting her discretion over scheduling, she allowed for a one-week delay “to give new counsel to have a better opportunity to prepare for trial.”
Bannon, 71, pleaded not guilty in September 2022 following his indictment on state money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges.
Bannon is accused of falsely promising donors that all money given to the We Build the Wall campaign would go toward building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Instead, prosecutors allege that the money was used to enrich Bannon and others involved in the project.
Launched in 2018, the campaign quickly raised more than $20 million and privately built a few miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. But it soon ran into trouble with the International Boundary and Water Commission, came under federal investigation and drew criticism from Trump, the Republican whose policy the charity was founded to support.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg took up the case after Bannon’s federal prosecution was cut short by a pardon that Trump issued in the final hours of his first term.
Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses.
Early on in the fundraising campaign, Bannon pooh-poohed it, prosecutors said at a November hearing.
“Isn’t this a scam? You can’t build the wall for this much money,” Bannon wrote in an email, according to prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson. He said Bannon went on to add: “Poor Americans shouldn’t be using hard-earned money to chase something not doable.”
Two other men involved in the project, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, pleaded guilty to federal charges and were sentenced to prison. A third defendant, Timothy Shea, was convicted and also sentenced to prison.
Bannon went to prison in an unrelated case last year, serving four months at a federal lockup in Connecticut for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. He was released in October.
Aidala told Neubauer that Bannon’s new legal team is in the process of reviewing about 11 terabytes of case files that prosecutors have collected and turned over to them, which he said someone told him "would be like a U-Haul truck worth of material.”
“We are going to roll up our sleeves and get ready to try this case," the lawyer said.
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FILE - Steve Bannon appears in court in New York, Jan. 12, 2023. (Steven Hirsch/AP File)
CAIRO (AP) — Israel said on Thursday it has begun preparations for the departure of large numbers of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in line with President Donald Trump's plan for the territory. Officials meanwhile said Egypt has launched an diplomatic blitz behind the scenes to try and head off the plan.
The Trump administration has already dialed back aspects of the proposal after it was widely rejected internationally, saying the relocation of Palestinians would be temporary. U.S. officials have provided few details about how or when the plan would be carried out.
The Palestinians have vehemently rejected Trump's proposal, fearing Israel will never allow the refugees to return and that it would destabilize the region. Egypt has warned that such a plan could undermine its peace treaty with Israel, a cornerstone of stability and American influence in the Middle East for decades.
Saudi Arabia, another key U.S. ally, has also rejected any mass transfer of Palestinians and says it will not normalize relations with Israel — a key goal of the Trump administration — without the creation of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza.
Trump and Israeli officials have depicted the proposed relocation from war-ravaged Gaza as voluntary, but the Palestinians have universally expressed their determination to remain in their homeland.
Trump and Israeli officials have not said how they would respond if Palestinians refuse to leave. But Human Rights Watch and other groups say the plan, if implemented, would amount to “ethnic cleansing,” the forcible relocation of the civilian population of an ethnic group from a geographic area.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he has ordered the military to make preparations to facilitate the emigration of large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza through land crossings as well as “special arrangements for exit by sea and air.”
There were no immediate signs of such preparations on the ground.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has not publicly responded to Trump's stunning proposal that most of Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians be relocated and the United States take charge of rebuilding the territory. Israel's 15-month campaign against the militant Hamas group had reduced large parts of Gaza to rubble before a fragile ceasefire took hold last month.
But Egyptian officials, speaking Wednesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks, said Cairo has made clear to the Trump administration and Israel that it will resist any such proposal, and that the peace deal with Israel — which has stood for nearly half a century — is at risk.
One official said the message has been delivered to the Pentagon, the State Department and members of the U.S. Congress. A second official said it has also been conveyed to Israel and its Western European allies, including Britain, France and Germany.
A Western diplomat in Cairo, also speaking anonymously because the discussions have not been made public, confirmed receiving the message from Egypt through multiple channels. The diplomat said Egypt was very serious and viewed the plan as a threat to its national security.
The diplomat said Egypt rejected similar proposals from the Biden administration and European countries early in the war, which was sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel. The earlier proposals were broached privately, while Trump announced his plan at a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump said he wanted to “permanently” resettle most of Gaza's population in other countries and for the United States to take charge of clearing debris and rebuilding Gaza as a “Riviera of the Middle East" for all people. He did not rule out the deployment of U.S. troops there.
U.S. officials later appeared to walk it back, saying the relocation of Palestinians would be temporary and that Trump had not committed to putting American boots on the ground or spending American tax dollars in Gaza.
The Egyptian officials said their government does not believe the Palestinians need to be relocated for reconstruction to proceed and is committed to the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
Israel's government is opposed to Palestinian statehood and has said it will maintain open-ended security control over both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and considers the entire city its capital.
Last week, Egypt hosted a meeting of top diplomats from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — which was the driving force behind the 2020 Abraham Accords Trump brokered between with Israel. All five Arab nations rejected the transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza or the West Bank.
In an editorial on Thursday, Egypt’s main state-run daily, Al-Ahram, warned that “the Arab countries' independence, their peoples’ unity and their territorial integrity are under grave threat.”
Associated Press writer Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
A man walks past a house that remains partly standing, but with sheets serving as makeshift walls and solar panels partly working, in an area largely destroyed by the Israeli army's air and ground offensive in Gaza City, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Two children wait to get water next to a line of empty jerrycans in an area largely destroyed by the Israeli army's air and ground offensive in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A man pushes a cart past a house that remains partly standing, but with sheets serving as makeshift walls, in an area largely destroyed by the Israeli army's air and ground offensive in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Laundry hangs on a destroyed building caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A young Palestinian kid carries jerricans along the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A man sells bread under the destruction of his bakery destroyed by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)