Bannon partners had history of cashing in on president

Range Rover, a fishing boat, home renovations and cosmetic surgery.

Some court observers believe at least some of the participants believed they could get away with it because their man was in the White House.

“This cast of characters was using Bannon as a front to get the people behind them,” said David S. Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami. “Him thinking he wasn’t going to get caught — and if he did, that he would be pardoned — may have factored a little bit into why he was involved.”

At the head of the We Build The Wall venture was 38-year-old veteran Brian Kolfage of Miramar Beach, Fla., who since losing both legs and an arm in a rocket attack in Iraq has become a conservative activist, motivational speaker and constant presence on social media, haranguing the left, praising Trump and provoking others.

“We need to elect stonecold killers,” he posted on

Twitter last month. “We will soon have a revolution in this country.”

Hours after his arrest Thursday, he took to Facebook, portraying the case as an underhanded attempt to kill Trump’s reelection chances.

“Democrats love a good political witch hunt before the elections,” he wrote.

Bannon picked up on that charge on his podcast, “War Room,” on Friday, hardly sounding like someone who only hours earlier was charged with fraud and money laundering, crimes that carry up to 20 years in prison.

“This was to stop and intimidate people that want to talk about the wall. This is to stop and intimidate people that have President Trump’s back on building the wall,” said Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty. “This is a political hit job.”

As for Kolfage, Bannon called him “an American hero.”

A serial entrepreneur, Kolfage started a string of ventures and side businesses over the years. He has raised money to help mentor wounded veterans and, after one of his news sites was shut down, rallied supporters to Fight4FreeSpeech.

This year, he launched a company to buy up and distribute N95 masks, solicited donations for a lawsuit against Black Lives Matter protesters, and called for a boycott of the NFL and NBA over their embrace of the movement.

Another charged Thursday, 49-year-old Timothy Shea of Castle Rock, owns an energy drink company called Winning Energy whose cans bear a cartoon superhero image of Trump and claim to contain 12 ounces of “liberal tears.”

Also indicted was Andrew Badolato, 56 of Sarasota, Fla., who describes himself as a venture capitalist on his personal website and a “hobbyist conservative” enjoying a “new lease on life after suffering a major heart attack in December 2014 and being brought back to life.”