Former Trump advisor says Steve Bannon only touted the former president's baseless voter fraud claims to get a pardon

• A former Trump campaign aide says Steve Bannon didn't really believe Trump's voter fraud lies.
• Sam Nunberg said Bannon needed a pardon and touted Trump's baseless voter fraud claims to get it.

A former Trump campaign aide said in an interview published this week that he didn't think Steve Bannon believed any of Trump's baseless voter fraud claims but touted them anyway to secure a presidential pardon.

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide turned political consultant, spoke to The Atlantic for an article on Bannon titled "American Rasputin." Bannon and Nunberg both worked on the Trump campaign in 2016, before Bannon became the former president's chief strategist.

"Steve was in on the joke," said Nunberg, per The Atlantic. "He never believed that the election would be overturned. Steve needed a pardon."

"The tragedy of Steve Bannon is that when he leaves the White House, he's known as the great manipulator, the intellectual heavy of the international populist uprising," Nunberg added, per the outlet. "But still he ends up in the fetal position at Donald Trump's feet."

Bannon received a pardon from Trump as one of the latter's last acts in office. At the time, Bannon was facing fraud charges connected to the "We Build A Wall" online fundraising campaign.

The former Trump strategist continues to push the false and unsubstantiated claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump on his podcast, "War Room: Pandemic."

In the same article, Stephanie Grisham, Trump's former press secretary, also weighed in on Bannon, saying that "his old life, as he knows it, is gone."

"He has gone in sooooo deep on the Big Lie of this election being stolen — he's not gonna go back to, I don't know, doing whatever it was he did before," Grisham said, per The Atlantic, adding that it is hard for those close to Trump to make it out of the former president's orbit.

The Atlantic reported that Bannon responded to Nunberg's claims, calling it "absurd" that he would push a lie about election fraud just for a Trump pardon.

"  'Cause they don't believe it," he told the outlet. "Doesn't mean I don't believe it. I absolutely believe it, to the core of my being."

Bannon is expected to go on trial in Washington, D.C., in July. He is facing two criminal charges for defying a congressional subpoena.

In November, the Justice Department formally charged him following his non-compliance with a subpoena handed down from the House panel investigating the Capitol riot.