Stephen K. Bannon’s trial on fraud charges will start in March, a week later than previously scheduled, and will include a high-profile lawyer after a judge granted Mr. Bannon’s request for new representation.
Earlier this month, Mr. Bannon asked the judge overseeing the case to allow him to replace his lawyers with Arthur Aidala, a well-known defense attorney. The judge, April A. Newbauer, ordered Mr. Bannon to appear in court on Wednesday to make his argument for the change.
Mr. Bannon said in court that he had begun seeking new representation after a November hearing in which he was dissatisfied by the performance of his legal team. He said they had acted as though he was charged with defrauding people of only $50,000 and not millions.
“I’ve been smeared by political prosecution — and persecution,” he told the judge Wednesday, adding, “I need people who are more aggressive and will use every tool in the toolbox.”
Mr. Aidala’s past and current clients include Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and also President Trump’s former lawyer; the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein; and a former top aide to New York’s current mayor, Eric Adams.
Justice Newbauer ruled Wednesday that Mr. Aidala could join the case and pushed back the trial’s start one week, to March 4, to let him prepare.
It was the second time that Mr. Bannon, who is charged in a scheme to defraud donors who thought they were contributing to the construction of a southern border wall, had replaced his defense team since he was charged by Manhattan prosecutors in September 2022.
In 2023, one of his lawyers left the case, saying there had been “a complete breakdown in communication.” His current lawyers have also asked to leave the case; on Wednesday the judge ordered them to resubmit that request.
The case centers on Mr. Bannon’s involvement with a group called We Build the Wall, which raised more than $25 million to help construct a barrier between the United States and Mexico, President Trump’s signature policy initiative during his first term. The group’s officers conspired to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into their own pockets, lying to funders, prosecutors said.
The case against Mr. Bannon has been winding through the courts for years. He faced similar federal charges before President Trump, in the final hours before he left office in 2021, pardoned him. But several co-conspirators went to prison.
In 2022, the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicted Mr. Bannon and charged him in a scheme they said had “netted $15 million from thousands of donors across the country based on false promises.”
Mr. Bannon’s trial was initially scheduled for May 2024 and was to be overseen by Juan M. Merchan, the same judge who ended up presiding over Mr. Trump’s Manhattan trial that month in which he was convicted of 34 felonies.
An influential figure in right-wing media, Mr. Bannon was a central character in President Trump’s orbit for years. He was an architect of his 2016 election victory and served as a White House strategist.
In October, Mr. Bannon was released from prison after serving four months on contempt charges for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena for information about the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Because the prosecution that Mr. Bannon now faces is on state charges, President Trump cannot pardon him.
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