Steve Bannon Is Charged With Fraud in (2020) ‘We Build the Wall’ Campaign

Steve Bannon Is Charged With Fraud 

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former top adviser, was charged on Thursday in ny with fraud for his role during a scheme associated with “We Build the Wall,” a web fund-raising campaign that collected quite $25 million for the president’s much-touted decide to erect a barrier on the Mexican border, officials said.

Mr. Bannon and three other defendants “defrauded many thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to boost many dollars, under the false pretence that each one of that cash would be spent on construction,” Audrey Strauss, the acting us attorney in Manhattan, said during a statement Thursday.

Mr. Bannon was arrested early Thursday in Connecticut by U.S. postal inspectors and delivered to Manhattan where he faced charges during a two-count indictment unsealed in administrative district court. He was expected to seem before a U.S. magistrate judge in ny later within the day.

According to federal authorities, Mr. Bannon, widely considered the architect of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, hatched the plot to defraud donors to the build-the-wall campaign with three other men: Brian Kolfage, 38, an Air Force veteran from Miramar Beach, Fla.; Andrew Badolato, 56, a financier from Sarasota, Fla.; and Timothy Shea, 49, of chateau Rock, Colo.

As the founding father of “We Build the Wall,” Mr. Kolfage promised his donors that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” which all of the cash he raised would be used “in the execution of our mission and purpose,” prosecutors said.

But those promises were false, prosecutors said. Instead, they said, Mr. Kolfage secretly took quite $350,000 in donations for his own personal use. Mr. Bannon, through an unnamed nonprofit organization, received quite $1 million from “We Build the Wall,” prosecutors said, a number of which he used pay off many thousands of dollars in personal expenses.

To conceal the illicit flow of cash , prosecutors said, the four men routed payments from “We Build the Wall” not only through Mr. Bannon’s nonprofit group, but also through a shell company that Mr. Shea controlled.

Prosecutors suggested that they were in possession of a text message during which Mr. Kolfage tells Mr. Badolato that the payment scheme was “confidential” and will be kept on a “need to know” basis.

A White House spokesman declined to discuss the fees .