Charges dropped against Steve Bannon…
NEW YORK — An indictment against Steve Bannon was dismissed Tuesday over the objection of prosecutors who said it should stand despite Trump’s decision to pardon his former chief strategist.
The dismissal came in a written ruling by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, who called it the “proper course.”
The Manhattan jurist said it was not the practice of the region’s federal courts to remove a defendant from a case’s docket without resolving the indictment. And she noted that the pardon does not by itself render a defendant innocent of the alleged crime nor eliminate probable cause of guilt.
“To the contrary, from the country’s earliest days, courts, including the Supreme Court, have acknowledged that even if there is no formal admission of guilt, the issuance of a pardon may ‘carr(y) an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it,’” she wrote, partially quoting a 1915 court ruling.
Bannon had pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he and three others defrauded donors in a $25 million fund to build a wall along the nation’s southern border.
Federal prosecutors had asked the judge to let the indictment against him stand.
Flags to be flown at half mast for our liberal friends, forced to endure this terrible loss.