NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 We Build the Wall, the nonprofit prosecutors say Steve Bannon worked with to dupe donors who gave money to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, is effectively out of business and can't afford to defend itself in a New York fraud case, a lawyer for the organization said Tuesday.
Justin Weddle, seeking to be removed from the case, told a judge that the last member of We Build the Wall鈥檚 board is resigning and that the entity has racked up a 鈥渟ignificant outstanding bill鈥 for legal services and that he has "no prospect of getting paid.鈥
鈥淎re you saying you鈥檇 like to withdraw because of the lack of resources or because you don鈥檛 have a client?鈥 Judge Juan Manuel Merchan asked.
鈥淏oth," Weddle responded.
Bannon and We Build the Wall of a federal case cut short in January 2021 by Bannon's presidential pardon. They have pleaded not guilty to charges including money laundering, fraud and conspiracy.
Talk of We Build the Wall鈥檚 collapse upstaged Bannon in his first court appearance since being forced to find new lawyers after his old ones said they had .
Bannon, a conservative strategist and longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, has hired New York City lawyer Harlan Protass, and Joshua Kirshner, John Carman and Susan Scaring Carman, who are based on Long Island.
Separately, last week, a law firm that represented Bannon in previous legal matters sued him, alleging that he stiffed them out of .
Bannon鈥檚 legal line change will only prolong the case as his new lawyers get up to speed on what they said was 32 terabytes of digital evidence 鈥 equivalent to the storage on 32 of the biggest iPhones, or more than 2,000 Gmail accounts 鈥 that's been turned over by the Manhattan district attorney's office.
One of Bannon's lawyers left court Tuesday holding a hard drive full of evidence that he said prosecutors gave him just before the hearing began.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been on the case five days. We are digging in,鈥 Protass said.
Assistant District Attorney Daniel Passeser said despite the defense's eye-popping estimate, there were probably fewer terabytes of evidence that needed to be reviewed 鈥 and that the biggest files were ultra-high definition videos that take up a lot of space but don't necessarily take a lot of time to watch.
Some of the prosecution鈥檚 evidence came from Manhattan federal prosecutors, whose efforts to put Bannon behind bars . Passeser said prosecutors ran into delays in receiving that material from the U.S. attorney's office. State-level charges aren鈥檛 covered by presidential pardons.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan, exasperated with the case's growing calendar, scolded prosecutors for not providing evidence sooner but also blamed Bannon for squabbling with his previous set of lawyers and squandering the nearly six months that have passed .
鈥淧art of that is Mr. Bannon鈥檚 own doing because he couldn鈥檛 get along with his lawyers or they couldn鈥檛 get along with him," Merchan said. "We can鈥檛 keep dragging this out.鈥
Nevertheless, Merchan pushed the next pretrial hearing until May 25, giving Bannon鈥檚 lawyers more time to review evidence.
Bannon is accused of falsely promising donors that all money given to We Build the Wall would go to building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, instead using the funds to enrich people involved in the project. Prosecutors say Bannon was involved in transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to third-party entities and using them to funnel payments to two other people involved in the scheme.
The Manhattan indictment didn鈥檛 identify those people by name, but the details match those of Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in April. A third defendant, Timothy Shea, was convicted in October.
Merchan delayed ruling on Weddle鈥檚 request to withdraw as We Build the Wall鈥檚 lawyer, instead scheduling a March 16 hearing on the matter so he could have time to research what he said was a complex issue.
Weddle said it was unlikely that another lawyer would step in to replace him. Merchan worried that 鈥渢he defendant would disappear from the defense table鈥 and said he'd never encountered a scenario in which a corporate defendant, as We Build the Wall is, wasn't represented by a lawyer.
鈥淗ere we don鈥檛 even have a physical defendant," Merchan said.
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