by - Steve Bannon’s ex-lawyers filed a lawsuit saying he failed to pay nearly $500,000 in legal fees.
- The company represented Bannon when he resisted his Jan. 6 subpoena.
- They also represented him in a case involving a fundraising program to build a US-Mexico border wall.
A law firm that previously represented former White House strategist and right-wing provocateur Stephen Bannon filed a lawsuit against him, seeking nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal fees.
The law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP represented Bannon in criminal matters in Manhattan and Washington, DC between November 2020 and November 2022. The firm employs Robert Costello, an attorney who has represented Bannon on two federal cases.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, says the company was billed $855,487.87 but only paid $375,000 to Bannon, leaving an outstanding balance of $480,487.87.
“The defendant never objected to the accuracy of the invoices,” the lawsuit states.
Bannon was represented by Costello while fighting a subpoena from the House Special Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riot in the Capitol. A jury convicted Bannon of contempt of congressional charges brought by federal prosecutors in Washington, DC. The judge sentenced him to four months in prison but allowed him to remain free while he appealed.
Costello also represented Bannon after federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York filed fraud charges against him in August 2020, alleging he misappropriated funds from a nonprofit organization earmarked to build a US-Mexico border wall after Donald’s administration Trump had received no funding from Congress to build it.
Costello didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Trump pardoned Bannon shortly before he left office, but Manhattan prosecutors filed a similar case against him, which is still pending.
Bannon also has problems with his attorneys in the Manhattan District Attorney’s case.
At a hearing in January, Bannon’s attorneys David Schoen and John Mitchell asked the presiding judge to drop Bannon as a client.
“There was a direct communications breakdown,” Schoen said at the hearing, calling their differences over defense strategy “irreconcilable.”
The judge, Juan Merchan, gave Bannon until the end of February to find new attorneys or risk appointing one for him.
