Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was charged Thursday in New York with defrauding donors who were giving money to build a wall at the southern U.S. border.

Bannon, 68, was indicted on charges including money laundering, scheming to defraud, and conspiracy in what prosecutors described as a yearlong scheme. He pleaded not guilty in a brief arraignment before acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and agreed to surrender his passports as a condition of his bail. Supreme Court is the name of New York’s principal criminal court.

“He’s not going anywhere. He intends to fight these charges all the way,” Bannon's attorney David Schoen told the judge.

The six-count indictment also names the group WeBuildTheWall.Inc, which it says worked with Bannon on the scheme in 2019. Bannon was chair of the "advisory board" for the group, which prosecutors say duped thousands of donors by maintaining that all the money raised would go to build a wall along the southern border and not to the people running the effort.

The group's president, Brian Kolfage, who is not named in the indictment, pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the scheme, the filing alleges. Some of the money was routed to him by Bannon, who had money from the campaign transferred to a nonprofit group under Bannon's control and then used the cash to pay Kolfage $140,000, the indictment alleges.

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