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A source famil­iar with the department’s inves­ti­ga­tion spoke this week, on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. They said now that Ban­non has been par­doned, it “would be up to the state of Flori­da to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing charges against We Build the Wall”.

“Offi­cials both inside and out­side the White House in Trump’s prox­im­i­ty” pushed for Trump to issue an eleventh-hour par­don from mon­ey laun­der­ing and fraud con­spir­a­cy charges, said a source famil­iar with the Ban­non par­don talks who request­ed anonymity.

“I’m not con­cerned about any state’s pros­e­cu­tion of the wall organ­i­sa­tion or even for Bri­an Kolfage specif­i­cal­ly,” said the source, who also has knowl­edge of the wall group. “Ulti­mate­ly, I believe the facts of We Build the Wall speak for them­selves and those charges won’t stand up. What that non-prof­it accom­plished was still vast­ly supe­ri­or to oth­er organ­i­sa­tions formed for those purposes.”

Ban­non ally and for­mer Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach, who is a vice pres­i­dent of the We Build the Wall effort, unsuc­cess­ful­ly sued in fed­er­al court to get the group’s remain­ing $3.5 mil­lion released late last year.

“More mon­ey was spent on lawyers ear­ly in We Build the Wall than on all of the ini­tial organ­is­ers com­bined. In fact, it was the group’s sec­ond-largest expense besides con­struc­tion,” said this source famil­iar with Bannon’s par­don. “There is a broad con­cern that under Kobach’s direc­tion the mon­ey will get swal­lowed into legal fees, instead of to fin­ish the project.”