Show an ad over header. AMP

Trump pardons Bannon in final hours of presidency

20 January 2021
Dan Ackermann

President Trump issued an eleventh-hour pardon to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon on Tuesday night, sparing a longtime ally from a federal fraud prosecution over his alleged misappropriation of nonprofit funds.

Why it matters: Bannon was the most high-profile name on a list of what's expected to be dozens pardons and commutations that the White House released, with mere hours remaining in Trump’s presidency. His pardon of the former Breitbart News chief came as Bannon faced criminal charges stemming from a scheme to privately finance a southern border wall.

Background: Bannon was arrested last summer and charged with defrauding donors to the group We Build The Wall, which raised more than $20 million — largely from Trump supporters — to construct barriers on sections of the U.S.-Mexico border.

  • Prosecutors accused Bannon and an alleged co-conspirator, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, of duping the effort’s financial backers with promises that they would not receive a dime of the funds raised.
  • In fact, prosecutors said, Bannon, Kolfage and others involved in the effort extracted millions ostensibly earmarked for border wall construction.
  • Bannon and Kolfage both pleaded not guilty.

Bannon is a longtime cheerleader for Trump’s brand of “populist nationalism,” which he championed at Breitbart and subsequently as a senior aide on Trump’s 2016 campaign and in his West Wing.

  • Bannon and the president had a major falling out in late 2017, when Bannon was revealed to have leaked information to author Michael Wolff for his tell-all book on the Trump White House.
  • Trump and Bannon have reportedly been in contact in recent weeks regarding the president’s ill-fated legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Bannon's legal jeopardy may have expanded beyond the ongoing prosecution involving We Build The Wall.

  • The FBI was said to be probing Bannon's work with Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire with whom he's teamed up on a host of news and business ventures of late.
  • When Bannon was arrested in August, he was aboard Guo's 151-foot yacht in the Long Island Sound.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.