GateHouse Media
August 21, 2020
You’ve probably never heard of Brian Kolfage. He was the founder of “We Build the Wall,” a grassroots effort to raise money, through the internet platform Gofundme, to build a wall on the U.S-Mexico border.
Within the last week, he made news when he tweeted,
“Because @Gofundme supports
the racist attacks by #blackLivesMatter, @WeBuildtheWall has
officially deleted its campaign from their site and we are moving to @FundRzr We had
the largest Gofundme campaign in history.”
While Kolfage fumed at Black Lives Matter for their “racism”
he boasted about his efforts to keep latinx out of America by producing the
largest fundraiser in internet history.
However, that wasn’t the biggest story of the week for
Kolfage and his associates. In fact, Kolfage wasn’t even the biggest story in
his own big story. Former President Donald Trump campaign CEO and White House
chief strategist Steve Bannon was indicted in New York on fraud charges related
to the We Build the Wall campaign.
Manhattan federal prosecutors and the U.S. Postal Inspection
Service allege that Bannon, Kolfage and two others “received hundreds of
thousands of dollars in donor funds from We Build the Wall, which they each
used in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations.”
Bannon is another in a line of former Trump advisors that
have ended up on the wrong side of the law. Bannon was brought on as the chief
executive officer of President Trump’s presidential campaign after a staff
shakeup just months before the election.
He left his job at Breitbart News, an agency Bannon
described as ”(T)he platform for the alt-right,” to help refocus Trump’s
campaign message.
Bannon pushed the Trump campaign, and later the
administration, toward race-baiting through the buzz words of crime,
immigration and foreign competition. According to former newspaper editor Tom
Murse, writing on ThoughtCo.com, “Under his stewardship, Breitbart has emerged
as the leading source for the extreme views of a vocal minority who peddle
bigotry and promote hate.”
Bannon later infused racism, hate and fear mongering into
the first seven months of the Trump administration as chief White House
strategist.
Bannon was a strong proponent of the border wall. After
leaving the White House he latched on to We Build the Wall seemingly with the intent
of being an altruistic “volunteer” leader of a campaign to fulfill his vision
of halting illegal immigration and helping his former boss fulfill his campaign
promise.
We have now learned that was not exactly what Bannon had in
mind. Bannon and his co-conspirators started in December 2018 to defraud
hundreds of thousands of donors from the We Build the Wall campaign that raised
more than $25 million.
Part of the conspiracy to induce donors was Kolfage
repeatedly assuring the public that he would “not take a penny in salary or
compensation” and that “100% of the funds raised ... will be used in the
execution of our mission and purpose” and Bannon publicly stated, “we’re a
volunteer organization.”
It appears that Bannon and Kolfage lied. In truth, the two
of them and their co-conspirators allegedly took hundreds of thousands of
dollars in donor funds. The U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement, Kolfage
took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds. Bannon funneled to a
non-profit organization under his control over $1 million - much of it used for
personal expenses.
The conspirators set up non-profits and shell corporations
to conceal the fraud. They furthered the fraud by using fake invoices and sham
“vendor” arrangements to ensure, as Kolfage noted in a text message, that his
pay arrangement remained “confidential” and kept on a “need-to-know” basis.
Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett of the New York Field
Division of the United States Postal Inspection Service said in a statement,
“This case should serve as a warning to other fraudsters that no one is above
the law, not even ... a millionaire political strategist.”
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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