After a scheduling hearing for his upcoming fraud trial, the self-proclaimed right-wing warrior Steve Bannon stood outside Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday afternoon and threatened the top law enforcement officers in the city, state and nation.

He specifically mentioned Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, US Attorney General Merrick Garland, Associate Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Special Counsel Jack Smith.

“The hunted must become the hunter,” he said.

One prosecutor Bannon did not mention was Audrey Strauss, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York when she brought charges against Bannon and three co-defendants for defrauding, in her words, “hundreds of thousands of donors , leveraging their interest in financing. a border wall to raise millions of dollars under the false pretense that all this money will be spent on construction.”

Instead of being outraged at the mere idea that someone would cheat those who reached into their own pockets to help build the Wall, Trump pardoned Bannon in the final hours of his term. Trump did nothing for the others, who were all convicted in federal court. This included Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who lost both his legs and a hand to an enemy missile in Iraq in 2004. He is currently serving a 51-month sentence in a prison medical facility. He is not due for release until September 2026. He has two young children at home.

In a move that seems a bit more aggressive than simply enforcing the law, AG James and DA Bragg stepped in and indicted Bannon on a state variant of the federal charges for which Bannon had been pardoned. This is the case that landed Bannon in court a week after the election. No matter how powerful Trump becomes now, he can’t do anything about the state.

Bannon strode down Center Street from a shiny black Suburban in a black shirt, brown jacket and gray pants with a black stripe down the leg. He said the “American people” had sent a message to MAGA’s political opponents.

“You know what the American people told them to do? Go to hell, he said.

He looked better than his usual crazy self. Maybe it was a glow of MAGA’s victory. Or maybe he just served four months in federal prison on an unrelated charge, refusing to obey a subpoena to testify before Congress about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Maybe he’s that rare soul the prison agrees with.

A little time in the slammer allowed him to better play the role of a political prisoner.

But while politics may have had something to do with Bragg bringing state charges, the case itself is about money laundering and conspiracy to defraud some of the same American people. Bannon was just another accused criminal out on bail as he rode the elevator up to the 13th floor.

He entered Part 51, Room 1324, two floors below the one where Trump was tried and convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records while paying hush money to a porn star, with whom Trump had had a one-night stand in 2006. Trump once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote — and he proved it at the polls last week past that he could be convicted of 34 felonies on Center Street and actually win votes.

If Trump had lost the election, Judge Juan Merchan likely would have continued the sentencing scheduled for Nov. 26. But as the former president became the next president, Trump’s lawyers moved to have the conviction dismissed. Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote a letter to Judge Merchan stating, “The people agree that these are unprecedented circumstances.”

Both the prosecution and the defense asked Merchan for more time to assess the new reality and suspend any further rulings until November 19, 2024. The judge granted the joint request at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Halfway down the corridor from Merchan’s courtroom stood a sign attesting to a different meaning of ballots in this dirty palace of justice, where there is no place for politics and a grand jury indictment is followed by a jury trial .

ATTENTION JURY

Small Jury Service

Red bulletins

Report to

Central jury room

—

Grand Jury Service

Blue ballots

Report to

Grand Jury Room

Ballots here are cards given to newsmen when sent as either regular or grand jurors. The central jury room is at the far end. Here, the jury for criminal trials awaits possible selection. The hall was filled with dozens of citizens who had been called upon to assume a vital role in the rule of law. The clerk who addressed them was almost as hard to understand as a subway announcement, but her purpose was clear. She said that around 3:40pm an email would notify her team that there were no more cases for the day. Anyone who had not been chosen would then be free to go for the day.

“Because you won’t have any reason to stay,” she said.

In April, potential jurors in the Trump case had been selected before that deadline. The trial began on April 15 and they spent six weeks hearing testimony and studying evidence. They found him guilty on May 30 after deliberating for nine and a half hours. He was originally scheduled for sentencing on July 12, four days before the Republican National Convention.

But delay followed delay, and now it looks like Trump may never be convicted. A sitting president cannot be imprisoned even for a few token days. And the law is not clear when it comes to a president-elect who should be busy preparing his new administration.

Down on the 13th floor, Judge April Newbauer scheduled a hearing in the Bannon case for 2:15 p.m. Bannon was so slow to pay his lawyers that they sued him, but he had a new legal team that arrived minutes early. . A court officer asked how many seats they needed at the defense table.

“Four plus one,” replied one of the current lawyers.

A plus was Bannon, on time and with someone who was at least a doppelganger for Trump’s longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Bannon sat at the defense table with his hands folded in front of him as news photographers were allowed in to snap a few photos. Then he threw his right arm over the back of the chair beside him.

The trial is currently scheduled to begin on December 9, but defense attorney John Carman asked the judge to delay it until January so his team can address the evidence the prosecution is preparing to introduce.

“They’re trying to smear Mr. Bannon by making it look like he took money,” Carman said. “The money he was taking was money he was entitled to take.”

The judge adjourned the case until a further hearing, this time at 9:30 a.m. Monday, on the admissibility of that evidence.

In a variation on the routine when Trump was on trial, court officers ordered the media and spectators to remain seated while Bannon and his legal team left. He walked down the street, where other court officers had reserved a spot for his Suburban right in front of the courthouse.

His anger seems to have flared long before MAGA, and he seemed happy to unleash it by declaring war on what he calls law. An unease lingered in the air after he left, and it seemed that the basic rule of law embodied by the citizens in the central jury room – where a red ballot, as opposed to a blue one, has nothing to do with politics – is in itself. threatened by a gathering fury.