Bannon and friends face day of reckoning over wall accusations
RELAXED and full of bravado, Steve Bannon sat back in his seat, and smiled his wolfish grin at the camera.
“We’re off the coast of Saint-Tropez in southern France, on the Mediterranean,” he said. “We’re on a million-dollar yacht – Brian Kolfage, he took all that money from Build the Wall.”
He laughed, chummily slapping Mr Kolfage, triple-amputee Iraq veteran, on the shoulder. It was a joke, of course.
Fast forward just over a year, and, prosecutors say, that joke cut close to the bone. Mr Bannon was arrested on Thursday – on a $28million (£21million) yacht owned by a fugitive Chinese billionaire – and charged with taking the money from We Build the Wall, the crowdfunding group he headed.
Mr Kolfage, 38, was also arrested at his home in Miramar Beach, Florida; so too were Andrew Badolato, 56, a venture capitalist from Sarasota, Florida; and Timothy Shea, 49, of Castle Rock, Colorado. Mr Kolfage, Mr Badolato and Mr Shea were united by their admiration for Donald Trump, whose presidential election campaign was run from August 2016 by Mr Bannon.
Mr Kolfage had created a string of pro-Trump websites using mainly bogus stories to draw clicks and sell ads. His Instagram account was a stream of pro-Trump memes alongside photos of family holidays to the Bahamas or nights at the Emmys with his social media-influencer wife, Ashley. Mr Shea sold a Trump-themed energy drink he marketed as containing “liberal tears.” Mr Badolato reportedly had a trail of failed businesses and unpaid tax bills.
When Mr Trump’s promise to “build the wall” foundered – in three years, the government has only completed 30 new miles of border fencing, and replaced an additional 240 miles – the trio took matters into their own hands. They recruited Mr Bannon, 66, to champion their efforts.
Mr Bannon headed the Right-wing Breitbart News website before joining Mr Trump’s campaign and following him to the White House. Prosecutors say he was brought in when GoFundMe expressed concern at the legitimacy of the fundraising. Mr Kolfage turned to Mr Bannon for help, with a scheme to reallocate the money to a series of nonprofits and shell companies.
‘Him thinking that he was not going to get caught may have factored a little bit into why he was involved’
Mr Bannon and Mr Kolfage have denied the allegations. Mr Badolato and Mr Shea have not commented.
Donald Trump Jr called it “private enterprise at its finest.” “What you guys are doing is pretty amazing,” said Mr Trump Jr in 2018, with Mr Kolfage next to him, adding that the group showed “what capitalism is all about”.
All four are now charged with swindling donors to the ill-fated wall-building scheme, which has so far built less than five miles of border wall in New Mexico with the $25million raised. New York prosecutors, who unsealed the charges on Thursday, accuse them of treating the funds as a private piggy bank, which was spent on home renovations, payments toward a boat named Warfighter, a Land Rover SUV, a golf cart, jewellery, cosmetic surgery, personal tax payments and credit card debt, the indictment claimed. They each face up to 40 years in prison if convicted.
Mr Kolfage struck a deal with Mr Bannon and Mr Badolato to earn $100,000 from the wall funds immediately and $20,000 per month after that, according to the indictment.
Mr Kolfage on Friday described the charges against him using a term beloved by Mr Trump – a “witch hunt”. “They hate Trump, they hate the wall, they want to do anything to destroy our credibility,” he wrote on Facebook.
Mr Bannon was also defiant, strolling from court in Manhattan on Thursday to proclaim: “This fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”
Shortly before his arrest Mr Kolfage started another fundraising scheme, purportedly to file a class-action lawsuit against the Black Lives Matter movement. The day before his arrest, he was on Mr Bannon’s podcast, promoting a fund “for the victims of Black Lives Matter”.