Okay, but only this: I don’t believe they intentionally set out to deceive and seem to have done their level best not to blow their donations.
They just got in over their heads—strung out on zoning and environmental regulations and God only knows what other roadblocks an army of bureaucrats could dream up.
Add to this travel, a place to sleep and food—
I’m just reading this into the story, I really don’t know— just speculation. But this matter seems trivial at most. They’re prosecuted for not meeting their own standards, not legal government standards. Should government prosecute people who, say lapse on New Year’s resolutions?
This prosecution, if successful, will pretty much quash individual initiatives in the public sphere. There’s a law somewhere with which they’ll hang anyone by, and if not they’ll stretch it until it does.
Bottom line - the project is complicated and incurred some costs. Probably costs not planned for, and Bannon generously put himself on the hook for. So if expensed that for the security of America, good for him!
“I don’t believe they intentionally set out to deceive and seem to have done their level best not to blow their donations. They just got in over their heads”
100% agree. They brought Bannon in to help out and organize, but he was the one who then came up with the scheme to funnel hidden payments to them through a third party. If he came in and said get real, take a salary and just be open about it there would be no issue.
He screwed the original guys over. But they aren’t being indicted - that would have been cruel, and bad optics (disabled veteran).