Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon arrives at New York State Supreme Court for a hearing in New York City, U.S. January 12, 2023.
CNN
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A New York judge has ordered Steve Bannon to pay his former attorneys nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal fees for work on various legal matters, including his fight against a subpoena by the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.
The law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP sued Bannon in February alleging he failed to pay his legal bills for work the lawyers did for him on the congressional investigation as well as criminal investigations into his efforts to crowdfund a wall along the southern US border.
In a six-page order issued Friday, Judge Arlene Bluth ordered Bannon to pay $480,487.87 in unpaid bills as well as “reasonable legal fees” to his former lawyers who brought the lawsuit.
The judge granted the law firm’s motion for summary judgment, saying there was no dispute that Bannon signed a retainer agreement with the law firm to cover multiple investigations beyond a criminal investigation into the We Build the Wall fundraising effort conducted by the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, and that Bannon “did not adequately assert that he timely objected to these invoices.”
The judge noted that Bannon had paid $375,000 out of a $850,000 bill.
“Defendant cannot receive the benefit of plaintiff’s legal representation and then insist he need not pay for it. And defendant did not claim, for instance, that the partial payments he made were limited solely to the SDNY case,” the judge wrote.
“Moreover, plaintiff also showed in reply that defendant was actively seeking plaintiff’s legal representation well after the time (January 2022) that defendant allegedly told plaintiff to stop providing legal services,” the judge wrote.
An attorney representing Bannon in the litigation over past legal fees did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bannon was convicted at trial of contempt of Congress for failing to respond to the subpoena and is appealing. A grand jury in Manhattan indicted Bannon on state charges tied to We Build the Wall. Bannon has pleaded not guilty.
He was previously indicted on federal fraud charges for the fundraising effort but was pardoned by former President Donald Trump during his final days in office.
