Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is in the process of seeking new counsel in his criminal case concerning charges of fraud just one day after suggesting during a recording of his War Room: Pandemic podcast that he’d like to put Dr. Anthony Fauci’s and FBI Director Christopher Wray’s “heads on pikes” in front of the White House.
William Burck, a partner at the Quinn Emanuel law firm and the lead attorney in Bannon’s case, made the announcement in a Friday court filing, according to CNBC.
“Mr. Bannon is in the process of retaining new counsel, and Quinn Emanuel intends to move to withdraw,” Burck wrote in the filing in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Bannon and three co-defendants were charged in August with “defraud[ing] hundreds of thousands of donors” who gave money to a nonprofit organization, the We Build the Wall fund, that the defendants set up on the false pretense that the funds would go to border wall construction, according to Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bannon is currently out on $5 million bail.
The former Breitbart News chairman is scheduled to go on trial in May. In the same filing in which Burck announced his firm’s intent to withdraw, he also requested a three-week continuance of a status conference that was scheduled for Monday so that Bannon would have time to find a new attorney.
“Mr. Bannon respectfully requests that the status conference in this matter be adjourned for three weeks so that he may formally retain new counsel,” Burck wrote.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Burck and the Quinn Emanuel firm for further comment.
The announcement came one day after Bannon discussed what he would do to people in the Trump administration who dissatisfied President Trump during an episode of War Room: Pandemic.
“[Trump’s] second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. Now, actually, I want to go a step farther, but I realize that the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,” Bannon said. “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes, right? I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program, or you’re gone. Time to stop playing games.”
Steve Bannon calls for Dr. Fauci and FBI Director Wray to be beheaded “as a warning to federal bureaucrats”@youtube prohibits “inciting others to commit violent acts against individuals”
https://t.co/OECKxxQSzX pic.twitter.com/zBHimpUZT5
— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) November 5, 2020
Following the airing of the episode, Twitter permanently suspended the podcast’s account.
“The @WarRoomPandemic account has been permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules, specifically our policy on the glorification of violence,” a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
