President Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, was charged for his role in a scam that raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Philip R. Bartlett, inspector-in-charge of the New York Field Office, unsealed indictments on Thursday morning for Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea. The four men led the “We Build the Wall” fundraiser that sought donations to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which was a 2016 campaign promise from Trump. The group raised more than $25 million. All four men were arrested Thursday morning, and each was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which could result in up to 20 years in prison.
“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,” Strauss said in a statement.
“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,” she continued. “We thank the USPIS for their partnership in investigating this case, and we remain dedicated to rooting out and prosecuting fraud wherever we find it.”
[READ More: Bannon pleads not guilty in ‘We Build the Wall’ fundraiser scam]
The 24-page complaint against the four men provides further details about the fundraising scheme, stating that “the public narrative deliberately crafted” by Bannon, Kolfage, and Badolato “was false” because “in fact, although We Build the Wall spent money on the construction of a border wall, hundreds of thousands of dollars were siphoned out of We Build The Wall for the personal use and benefit” of Kolfage, Bannon, Badolato, and Shea.
Bannon, 66, was the former head of Breitbart News Network and was the CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign before serving as a chief strategist in the White House. He left that role in August 2017. Kolfage is a U.S. Air Force veteran and triple amputee and the founder of We Build The Wall, which purported to raise money to build a privately constructed wall on the border between the United States and Mexico.
Bannon is expected to appear virtually in federal court on Thursday, according to ABC News.
The White House immediately distanced itself from Bannon after news of his arrest.
“As everyone knows, President Trump has no involvement in this project and felt it was only being done in order to showboat and perhaps raise funds. … President Trump has always felt the Wall must be a government project and that it is far too big and complex to be handled privately. … President Trump has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.
Bannon, Kolfage, Badolato, and Shea “orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors, including donors in the Southern District of New York, in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign ultimately known as ‘We Build The Wall’ that raised more than $25 million,” according to prosecutors. Investigators pointed to the fact that “to induce donors to donate to the campaign,” Kolfage “repeatedly and falsely assured 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” because, as Bannon himself claimed publicly, “we’re a volunteer organization.” But, prosecutors said, “those representations were false.”
“The defendants allegedly engaged in fraud when they misrepresented the true use of donated funds. As alleged, not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth,” Bartlett said. “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.”
Prosecutors said the four men “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.” Investigators specifically said Kolfage “covertly took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds that donors had given to We Build the Wall” while Bannon “through a non-profit organization under his control, received over $1 million from We Build the Wall, at least some of which he used “to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars” in his “personal expenses.”
The four men “devised a scheme to route those payments from We Build the Wall” to Kolfage indirectly through Bannon’s nonprofit organization and a shell company under Shea’s control, “among other avenues,” prosecutors said. “They did so by using fake invoices and sham ‘vendor’ arrangements, among other ways, to ensure, as Kolfage noted in a text message to Badolato, that his pay arrangement remained ‘confidential’ and kept on a ‘need to know’ basis.”
Bannon took the reins at Trump’s campaign in August 2016 following the departure of Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist who also spent years working overseas in places like Ukraine. Manafort was convicted of a host of financial crimes arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week concluded Manafort posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his Russia connections.
Bannon testified during the trial of Trump associate and self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone in November 2019, telling the jury that “it was generally believed that the access point or the potential access point to WikiLeaks was Roger Stone … because Roger told me he had a relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.” Stone was convicted on charges of lying to Congress, but not with engaging in any sort of conspiracy with the Russians.
Mueller’s investigation concluded that the Russian government interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” according to his report that was released in April 2019. Mueller’s team also “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” but “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz identified a litany of problems related to the Trump-Russia investigation and criticized the FBI’s reliance upon British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.
Separately, the Los Angeles Times first reported over the weekend that the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a bipartisan letter to the Justice Department last summer criminally referring Bannon for potentially lying to congressional investigators as they looked into Russia’s meddling during the 2016 presidential election.
