By Shane Savitsky, AXIOS
Photo: Adrian Bretscher/Getty Images
Former Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon was charged on Thursday with fraud by federal prosecutors in New York and taken into custody.
The state of play: Bannon, along with three others, allegedly defrauded donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for their own profit with a crowdfunding campaign called “We Build the Wall” that raked in over $25 million.
- The indictment says that Bannon, via a non-profit, took in over $1 million from the scheme “and at least some of it was used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in [his] personal expenses.”
- Bannon’s co-conspirators are Brian Kolfage, who served as the organization’s founder and president, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea.
- Kolfage deleted the organization’s GoFundMe page on Wednesday, alleging that the platform was engaged in “censorship” after it shut down another of his campaigns centered on suing Black Lives Matter.
Why it matters: Bannon’s indictment makes him the sixth person linked to the senior leadership of the 2016 Trump campaign to be hit with federal charges.
- The others are Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen — all of whom faced indictments under the Mueller investigation.
- A lower-level campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was also charged.
The big picture: According to its website, We Build the Wall’s says it “will focus on building portions of a U.S. Southern Border wall and manage the support operations required for, and the processes associated with, the design, engineering, construction, and maintenance of the wall.”
- The indictment says that the organization did indeed spend money on a border wall but alleges that “hundreds of thousands of dollars were siphoned … for the personal use and benefit” of the defendants.
- They allegedly used the money “for a variety of personal expenses, including, among other things, travel, hotel, consumer goods and personal credit card debts.” Kolfage specifically allegedly used his share for “home renovations, payments toward a boat, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, personal tax payments and credit card debt.”
What they’re saying: “As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement.
- “This case should serve as a warning to other fraudsters that no one is above the law, not even a disabled war veteran or a millionaire political strategist,” added Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
Full article at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/20/we-build-wall-brian-kolfage/
@ Bear Klein:
I then posted: ” don’t know anything about it. I just saw that he was arrested and the charges. Where has anything else been reported? What can you tell me about this Chinese guy who I know nothing about? Also, he hasn’t been working for Trump in years and Trump just distanced himself from Bannon saying he knows only what he read on social media and the news about this and that he didn’t approve of the project and thought it was just about show-boating. I just posted the clip from Epoch Times.”
Here’s the clip:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/secret-docs-destroyed-by-china-trump-reacts-to-steve-bannon-arrest-sad-chinas-spy-program-exposed_3469885.html
I did read that Trump has been sued in the Supreme Court for donating his salary to Government Departments whose budges he had cut on the alleging that it is unconstitutional to donate money to specific departments., which is apparently what this project set out to do.
I do not know about Bannon.
The guy who was running the organization will have a super hard time getting out of the charges. He sounds like a complete fraudster.
An anti-Communist Chinese or Taiwanese, I’m not sure, he’s Han, anyway, man I know said: ”
“The fact the he was arrested on that $35,000,000.00 yacht is very ironic because he is one of the advocates that are supposed to drain the swamp, because the owner of the yacht is a Chinese billionaire, and ex-Chinese communist member, thief , grifter. He stole billions of dollars and then escaped out of China. He is in the most wanted list.”
After posting, as a humorous reply, the clip on youtube at the end of “Some Like it Hot, ” with the punchline, “Nobody’s Perfect” (when Jack Lemmon in drag tells Joe E. Brown he can’t marry him because he’s a man.)
I said: “But, seriously, I want to wait and see what the other side says before I pass judgement. That’s why the American judicial system works comparatively well, and it does most of the time. It’s adversarial, with two sides having to prove every element of their argument, with a judge as referee and an impartial jury deciding the facts of the case. Or, that’s the way it’s supposed to work but the internet makes it hard. The alternative is lynch mob instant justice as we have seen and are seeing all around us, not for much longer it is to be hoped (hopefully, though less awkward and more commonly used is grammatically wrong so I am making an effort to save the language here.)
Though, it’s true that Perry Mason and Matlock were more fun. Only an hour long, the defense finds the true bad guy and then says to a witness randomly culled from the audience in the last 5 minutes, do you want me to ask that person from the audience to testify that he saw you on the night of…” No, I confess, I confess.” Applause, tears, small talk. Curtain down.
Whether he’s guilty or not, it is true that there has been a witch hunt and fishing expedition against anybody who was ever close to Trump. as well as Trump himself, which has mostly come up with nothing or was clearly an unfair decision, eg, Mueller/Russia Collusion, Manafort, Roger Stone, Flynn, Kavanaugh, so it’s reasonable to be suspicious. I have a high opinion of him politically, and, the cartoon is slander; he’s no racist, he’s an economic nationalist who believes in American sovereignty, not the same thing, at all.”
“But I tell you that Chinese guy is not an angel, he is as evil as any Chinese communist in mainland China. You can tell a person from the friends he is hanging around”
(This was all on a cartoon he had re-posted which showed a baby Trump being fed cereal from a box labeled, “KKK” by Bannon. )
What’s he talking about? Anybody know?
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
This looks like something of a replay of the Roger Stone persecution.@ Sebastien Zorn:
Which Biden? and then there’s Clinton (both of them), Obama… Let the good times roll!
So, Biden will be next, right? I mean, Justice must be served! Not to mention the clinton foundation
Yet another politically motivated prosecution of a Trump supporter. Freedom o speech andf the press are being trampled by the entrenched “deep state” in their effort to oust Trump and repress conservatives. Outrageous.