Stephen K. Bannon’s trial on charges that he schemed to defraud people who donated money to build the southern border wall championed by Donald J. Trump was delayed on Monday by a judge in Manhattan.
The judge, April A. Newbauer of State Supreme Court, pushed the trial back to Feb. 25 from December during a hearing Monday morning on proposed evidence. The respite will allow the proceedings to avoid holiday disruptions. It also means that Mr. Bannon, one of the president-elect’s key supporters, will be undistracted in the days after Mr. Trump takes office Jan. 20, a period during which he has promised radical change for the nation.
Mr. Bannon, who previously faced similar federal charges and received a pardon from Mr. Trump, was accused in late 2022 of conspiracy, money laundering and fraud. The allegations are connected to a group called We Build the Wall that raised more than $25 million from donors across the country to put up a barrier between the United States and Mexico.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office have said that hundreds of people in the borough were among the donors who sent money to support the effort. Mr. Bannon, who had been a White House official in the Trump administration, played a senior role in We Build the Wall, which was also supported by other right-wing luminaries.
A key part of the group’s marketing was a promise that donations would be used only for the construction of a barrier. We Build the Wall’s public face, Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who lost both legs and part of his right arm in Iraq, wrote on the group’s website, “I will personally not take a penny of compensation from these donations.”
That sentiment was echoed by Mr. Bannon at a fund-raising event in 2019, according to an indictment, during which he said, “Remember, all the money you give goes to building the wall.”
Prosecutors said those assurances were false. The indictment charged Mr. Bannon, who served as chairman of the group’s advisory board, with taking part in a conspiracy to secretly funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr. Kolfage through third parties, including a nonprofit organization that Mr. Bannon controlled.
Mr. Bannon faced similar charges in 2020. He was arrested that year while on board a $35 million yacht belonging to a fugitive Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui after federal prosecutors accused him of defrauding donors to We Build the Wall and using more than $1 million gathered by the group to pay for personal expenses.
Before leaving office, Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Bannon, who never went to trial on those charges.
Mr. Kolfage was not pardoned. A federal judge last year sentenced him to four years and three months in prison.
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