Steve Bannon is due to appear in a New York court this week on charges of fraud — the latest prosecution of a Trump administration official.
Bannon, the former chief White House strategist and senior counsellor to Donald Trump, was reportedly expected to appear on Thursday over claims he embezzled $1 million from the "We Build the Wall" crowdfunding campaign.
Along with disabled veteran Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea, Bannon raised $25 million to help fund work on Trump's anti-people trafficking border wall with Mexico. Kolfage and Badolato pled guilty to fraud charges in August 2020.
The indictment against Bannon is expected to mirror federal charges for which Trump gave Bannon a pre-emptive pardon before leaving office.
Bannon, who was editor of of Conservative news site Breitbart before joining the Trump administration, denounced the "phoney charges" on Tuesday.
He accused New York county district attorney Alvin Bragg of being in the pocket of billionaire NGO kingpin George Soros and the Biden White house of inspiring "deranged thugs" to have him "swatted" as a way to silence his WarRoom podcast.
"Just days after being swatted three different times by deranged thugs from New York City inspired by the Biden Administration to assassinate me by police, the Soros-backed DA has now decided to pursue phony charges against me 60 days before the midterm election because WarRoom is the major source of the MAGA grassroots movement," Bannon told DailyMail.com.
Bragg's election campaign in 2021 was supported by the Color of Change political action committee, to which Soros donated $1 million.
But in February, less than two months after taking office, the DA declined to press charges against Trump himself for allegedly falsifying business records. That decision prompted the resignations of lead prosecutors Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz in protest.
Bannon said he was "proud to be a leading voice on protecting our borders and building a wall to keep our country safe from drugs and violent criminals."
"They are coming after all of us, not only President Trump and myself," Bannon stressed. "I am never going to stop fighting. In fact, I have not yet begun to fight. They will have to kill me first."
Bannon left his White House role in in August 2017 after just six months, reportedly after Trump ignored his advice to pull troops out of Afghanistan under pressure from the Pentagon.