Steve Bannon arrived at a courthouse in New York City on Thursday morning to surrender to New York State prosecutors over fraud charges.
Media outside the courthouse captured Bannon's arrival in a black SUV, with the former Trump official smiling and shaking hands with a law enforcement agent as he walked up the courthouse steps.
"This is an irony. On the very day the mayor of this city has a delegation down on the border, they're persecuting people here that are trying to stop them on the border," Bannon said in a brief statement to a throng of press as he was led inside. "Sixty days from today is election day," he added as agents nudged him forward.
Bannon and three associates raised more than $25 million to help fund Donald Trump's signature border wall on GoFundMe. Two of his associates pled guilty to fraud charges in 2020, and Bannon himself has been accused of pocketing $1 million in cash from the raised funds.
Bannon has dismissed the charges against him, saying Tuesday that authorities were trying to prosecute him on "phony charges," and alleging that he was being persecuted by New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
"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 said in an interview, referring to his podcast.
The former Trump official, who worked as editor of the conservative news website Breitbart.com before joining the Trump administration, accused the White House of "coming after all of us" and vowed that those engaged in the campaign against him would have to "kill" him before he stopped resisting.
Bannon served as special advisor to Trump between January and August before quitting over disagreements on the need to pull US troops out of Afghanistan after the president was got at by the Pentagon.
The former aide has been a major target for Biden and the Democrats ever since. In July, he was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress after ignoring a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots. He is expected to be sentenced in that case in October.