Putin critic ‘fighting for life’
called Citizens of the American Public that received more than $4.4m in contributions in 2018, government filings show.
The famously dishevelled entrepreneur and activist headed the rightwing Breitbart News before running Trump’s campaign. He later returned to that job, but quit after angering Trump. He has also tried to promote a variety of right-wing causes and candidates in the US and abroad.
“I feel very badly. I haven’t been dealing with him for a long time,” Trump told reporters at the White House. He said he did not know much about the project.
Bannon represents the latest close Trump associate to face criminal charges, a list that also includes former campaign chairperson Paul Manafort, long-time friend and adviser Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and former campaign deputy chairperson Rick Gates. Trump last month commuted Stone’s prison sentence, using his power of executive clemency to benefit a political ally.
A lawyer for Bannon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has struggled to build his signature wall along the US-Mexico border – a key 2016 campaign promise – in the fact of court challenges, logistical hurdles and opposition from Democrats in Congress.
In the meantime, more than 330 000 supporters have donated to private fund-raisers and profiteers who have promised to build the wall on their own.
RUSSIAN opposition politician Alexei Navalny, arguably the fiercest domestic critic of President Vladimir Putin, is in a coma at a Siberian hospital after a suspected poisoning, his spokesperson said yesterday.
“We believe Alexei was poisoned with something that was mixed in to his tea,” spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter.”
Navalny, 44, who has led several series of protests against Putin’s administration, which he accuses of widespread corruption, was on a plane from the Siberian city of Tomsk en route to Moscow when he began to feel sick, according to Yarmysh.
The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk. “Doctors are working to save his life,” deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko said.
Kalinichenko declined to speculate about a possible cause of Navalny’s ailment, saying that tests were being conducted to determine a diagnosis.
“This is probably the most I can tell you,” Kalinichenko said, according to a video broadcast by the TV Rain news channel, whose coverage is often supportive of Russia’s political opposition.
The EU’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, expressed concern for Navalny, according to a statement on Twitter.
“Worried to hear about Alexei Navalny’s suspected poisoning,” Borrell said. “If confirmed, those responsible must be held to account.”
Last year Navalny claimed to have been poisoned while detained for organising a protest movement that had gained traction in major cities throughout the country, particularly in Moscow.
Navalny was detained at the time along with more than 1 000 people amid an opposition protest in central Moscow. A day later he was hospitalised, complaining of eye pain and changes to his skin.
“A year ago, when Alexei was in jail, he was poisoned. It’s obvious they have done the same thing now,” Yarmysh said.
Yarmysh said that tea was the only drink Navalny had consumed.
“I am sure he was poisoned on purpose,” Yarmysh told the radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow), saying that Navalny had drunk the tea at the airport before the flight. | dpa