A judge has ordered Steve Bannon, an ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump, to pay his former attorneys more than $480,000 for unpaid legal work.
A New York Supreme Court judge on Friday awarded legal firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron $480,487.87 plus legal fees and approximately $4,800 in interest for what the firm said was two years’ worth of unpaid work.
The firm’s work included helping Bannon secure a presidential pardon in 2020 and defending him against ongoing fraud allegations in his former “We Build The Wall” campaign, which has a trial date set for next year.
Attorney Jeffrey Citron, a co-managing partner of the law firm that includes Trump’s legal ally Robert Costello, called the situation “unfortunate” in a statement to HuffPost on Monday and said the firm “was left with no recourse except to sue Mr. Bannon.”
“The firm intends to pursue every opportunity to collect our fees,” Citron said.
Bannon’s current attorney, Harlan Protass, told HuffPost: “The judge’s decision was clearly wrong and we intend to immediately appeal.”
Steve Bannon, seen in February, has been ordered by a New York judge to pay nearly $500,000 to his former law firm for unpaid work.
Bannon has argued that he never agreed to Davidoff Hutcher & Citron’s legal representation after January 2022, that he was not required to pay the firm’s invoices because he did not personally receive them, and that the firm performed work that stretched beyond its retainer agreement. He also claimed that he didn’t have to pony up any money because one of the attorneys, Costello, could be called as a witness in a case against him, according to the court filings.
But Bannon did not provide any evidence supporting his claim that he had declined Davidoff Hutcher & Citron’s work. The law firm also presented evidence showing that Bannon had requested its legal representation “well after” the time he claimed, Judge Arlene Bluth said in her ruling.
Bannon’s retainer with the firm was also not as limited as he claimed, Bluth added. She also called his objection to paying his legal bills because Costello could potentially be called a witness “without merit.”
Although Bannon said he had never personally received any of the firm’s bills, he acknowledged that his business team in California had been instructed to pay the law firm’s invoices, which he partially did. This indicated that he was, in fact, receiving the bills, the judge said.
“Clearly, someone affiliated with [the] the defendant was getting these invoices and [the] the defendant admits he instructed his team to pay [the] plaintiff,” the judge stated.
The ruling is the latest legal hit against the former White House strategist.
In addition to the ongoing “We Build The Wall” investigation ― which recently resulted in a four-year prison sentence for the failed campaign’s founder ― a judge sentenced Bannon to four months in prison last October and ordered him to pay $6,500 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the 2021 riot at the US Capitol.
Bannon has appealed that verdict, and his sentence has been delayed pending the appeal’s results.