Posted on 08/20/2020 7:15:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
Steve Bannon, We Build The Wall organizers arrested, charged with defrauding donors
Steve Bannon has been federally indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection to a crowdfunding campaign to build a border wall. Bannon was arrested this morning in Washington, D.C. on charges he and others allegedly made false representations about the We Build the Wall campaign.
Bannon, 66 is expected to appear in court virtually on Thursday.
Prosecutors said Bannon and others defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors to the online campaign by falsely assuring them the organizers were not taking a penny of donation money Bannon had publicly stated, were a volunteer organization.
Those representations were false, the indictment said.
Bannon, Brian Koflage, 38, of Mirimar Beach, Florida, Andrew Badolato, 56, of Sarasota, Florida, and Timothy Shea, 49, of Castle Rock, Colorado, were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
The defendants allegedly defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with the crowdfunding campaign, which raised more than $25 million.
The indictment was brought by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York.
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 press release. While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.
According to the indictment, Bannon took at least $1 million to pay personal expenses.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
The Democraps at SDNY are too busy gigging their Pubbie enemies for aggravated jaywalking and littering to deal with that...
Gosh, of course not.
I could see something quite similar to the "peaceful protests" in Portland at the Federal courthouse, for instance...
From FecesPedia:
We Build the Wall is an organization raising donations to build private sections of the wall along the MexicoU.S. border. It started as a GoFundMe campaign by United States Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage in December 2018.
However, Kolfage later announced the formation of a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization in January 2019.
Its advisory board includes politicians and activists with a hard-line stance on illegal immigration, including former Senate candidate Kris Kobach, ex-Congressman Tom Tancredo, and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who is chairman of the board.
On December 3, 2019, a Hidalgo County judge ordered the group to temporarily halt all construction due to its plans to build adjacent to the Rio Grande, which a lawyer for the National Butterfly Center argued would create a flooding risk.
On January 9, 2020, a federal judge lifted the injunction, allowing construction to resume.
On August 20, 2020, the Acting U.S. Attorney [an anonymous unnamed individual in this "report"] for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment charging Brian Kolfage, Steve Bannon, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea with a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors. The men face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each charge is a felony with up to 20 years in prison.
One would think that the rotting piles of lying dogsqueezins at SDNY would have figured out that there was "fraud" going on here before the end of the tenth week before the November election.
Guess they haven't managed to pry loose the Access Hollywood tapes yet...
The "history Narrative" tries to portray Mary Jo White as a White Hat - but I maintain she was a controlled POS.
Thoughts?
Show me where I said that, would you?
What I DO think is that illegal is illegal, regardless who you are, and regardless how corrupt the prosecutor is. Just because they’re one sided coup participants doesn’t make the supposed crime less criminal.
All these posts throwing out the charge because of the prosecutor are BS. Attack the actual source of the problem.
THINK.
No, the issue is, is it illegal? You didn’t answer my question, and for obvious reasons - because it negates your entire argument.
If you want to attack SDNY for being a corrupt !@#$hole, fine, but don’t call for a charge to be thrown out because you don’t like who brought it.
I was always suspect. I did not like him for some unknown reason. Now I know why...............
Not so ‘High Class’ hookers and Malt liquor..........................
Available for what? That’s a pretty freakin disrespectful thing to say.
Amen.
Hopefully the fine print established that “all donations go to the wall” exempted legitimate expense and employment claims from the organizers. If so, the legal test will then be whether their claims were legitimate. Inflated hourly rates or bogus expenses will support the case as filed; reasonable hourly rates and absence of questionable expenses would support the defense.
You weren’t defrauded, believe me, I grew up in New York, lived in New York my whole life and now have to because of a disabled parent who I care for.
New York is without question not only the most corrupt state in the union but one of the most corrupt areas in the entire world. For anything to change here the feds would have to move in and make mass arrests starting with Andrew Cuomo who is the definition of corruption.
Without question, without one scintilla of a shred of doubt in my mind Steven Bannon and and Brian Kolfage are 100% innocent. This is all about the election and harming Trump and you see how low they will go by arresting a disabled military hero, but that still isn’t as low as where Cuomo went by deliberately killing 1000s of elderly to up the death rate to make Trump look bad.
If I was Bannon and Kolfage I would do everything I could to get Sidney Powell to represent them. She is the lawyer who repped Michael Flynn and exposed the corrupt prosecution of him.
They Want to take Bannon out of this election cycle, he is far too effective in catching Dems at illegal election activity.
Bannon raised over 25 million dollars and took a mil in expenses? Where is the beef?
This was a private organization, not a charity.
The real question is what did they do with the money raised? Apparently it was lawful. No charges about that anywhere.
Bannon will not be cowed. The Dems radical lawyers won’t make any difference in their abuse of the legal system. Their days of terrorizing conservative political operatives are coming to a close soon.
I have many “beef[s]” with Trump, but will me marking my ballot next to his name in November. He’s the only game in town. Troll.
You are the troll.
I’ll make a deal with ya. You stop making silly statements, and I’ll stop calling you silly.
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