Bannon 7th Trump adviser criminally charged
Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, seven former advisers who served at the White House or worked in the campaign have been swept up in criminal prosecutions.
Six of the aides were charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. (Mueller's investigation resulted in indictments for 34 individuals overall.)
A seventh, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, was named in an indictment unsealed Thursday in an unrelated federal investigation into a border wall funding campaign. That inquiry is headed by federal prosecutors assigned to Manhattan's Southern District of New York.
Steve Bannon
Ban non, a former chief White House strategist, was one of four people charged by federal prosecutors with fraud in connection with a border wall fundraising effort that raised more than $25 million, officials said Thursday.
The indictment accused Ban non and the others of “defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors” in the “We Build the Wall” crowdfunding campaign to finance one of Trump' s signature programs.
Bannon is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Paul Manafort
Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted in August 2018 of tax and bank fraud charges related to his decade-long work as a lobbyist in Ukraine. He pleaded guilty a month later to related charges of failing to disclose his lobbying work and tampering with witnesses.
Manafort was sentenced to a combined 7.5 years in prison, but he was released to home confinement in May because of the health risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic in federal prison.
This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its investigation of Russian election interference that Manafort, while serving as Trump campaign chairman, repeatedly discussed the campaign's work with longtime associate Konstantin Kilimnik, who was a Russian intelligence agent.
Roger Stone
Roger Stone, along time Republican political operative who advised Trump during the campaign, was convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing its investigation into Russian election meddling and sentenced to three years in prison. Last month, Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime confidant, just days before Stone was set to report to prison.
Michael Flynn
Michael Flynn, Trump' s former national security adviser pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about meetings with Russians while in the White House. He cooperated with Mueller under a plea agreement.
In May 2020, the Justice Department abruptly dropped its case against there tired general.
In July, a federal appeals court in Washington, D. C ., agreed to rehear Flynn's case, a move that could resume the challenge to the Justice Department' s decision to abandon its prosecution.
Flynn' s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were a central reason he was forced out of the White House. Pence publicly announced that Flynn assured him the subject of sanctions t he Obama administration imposed on Russia were not raised in his conversations with Russian Ambassador SergeyK isl ya k after the election. Authorities who had monitored communications involving foreign diplomats knew that was not the case.
The Justice Department warned the White House that Russian officials, aware that Flynn had misled the White House, could have threatened to expose the nature of the communications as a way to gain leverage over Flynn in his sensitive security role.
What's more, authorities viewed Flynn's contacts with Russian diplomats as improper while the Obama administration was still in office – and a possible sign the Trump administration may have been trying to roll back sanctions imposed for Russia' s campaign of cy ber attacks and fake news to influence the election. Flynn was forced out in February.
George Papadopoulos
George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, pl e aded guilty in October 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his communications with people who represented themselves as tied to the Russian government.
A professor linked to the Kremlin told Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of“thousands of emails .” Papa do poul os tried repeatedly to setup meetings between the Russian government and Trump campaign officials, with the help of the “professor” and other wellconnected Russian contacts, the court filing shows, and suggested he could set up a meeting between Trump and the Russians during a campaign foreign policy advisory meeting attended by President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Papa do poul os served 14 days in prison and was ordered to pay a $9,500 fine and complete 200 hours of community service.
The president distanced himself from Papadopoulos after the guilty plea was made public, calling him a “low level volunteer.” Yet Trump touted Papadopoulos as an “excellent guy” in an interview with The Washington Post in March 2016.
Rick Gates
Rick Gates was referred to as the “right-hand man” of Manafort before and during the campaign and also headed Trump's inaugural committee. Gates had been charged with conspiracy, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign agent as well as making false statements to investigators in the special counsel investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The indictment said Gates used money from the illicit accounts to pay for his mortgage, his children's tuition and interior decorating of his Virginia residence. He pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy and lying to FBI agents and prosecutors. He cooperated with Mueller. In 2019 he was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
Michael Cohen
Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and fix er pleaded guilty in November 2018 to lying to Congress about a proposed real-estate deal in Moscow. He also pleaded guilty in August 2018 to charges related to making hush money payments to two women who claimed to have had sex with Trump. Cohen was sentenced in December 2018 to three years in prison.