Federal prosecutors on Thursday indicted one-time presidential aide Steve Bannon and three others on charges of taking money donated to help build a wall along the southern border, authorities said.
Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, Timothy Shea “and others orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors,” according to prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
The defendants’ online crowdfunding campaign “We Build The Wall” raised more than $25 million, with Kolfage “repeatedly and falsely assured the public that he would ‘not take a penny in salary,'” prosecutors said in a statement. And Bannon “publicly stated, ‘we’re a volunteer organization,’” prosecutors said.
But in fact, prosecutors said, the defendants took hundreds of thousands of donated dollars and used them for personal expenses.
Bannon is the former executive chairman of Breitbart News and once served as chief strategist for President Donald Trump.
And as the president struggled to gain funding for the wall — which he promised Mexico would pay for during his 2016 campaign — the group “We Build The Wall” vowed to step in with donations that go completely toward that effort.
“Those representations were false,” according to prosecutors.
“In truth, Kolfage, Bannon, Badolato and Shea 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.”
Kolfage pocketed more than $350,000 in “We Build The Wall” money while Bannon used a separate non-profit organization under his control to receive more than $1 million from wall-building fund, federal authorities said.
The defendants also allegedly used a non-profit organization and shell company under Shea’s control to move money.
“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,” prosecutors said.
Kolfage is listed as the founder of We Build The Wall, with Bannon named as advisory board chairman, according to the group’s website.
Dustin Stockton, a longtime Bannon ally and public relations contact for #GoFundTheWall, tweeted that he “got raided by SWAT serving a warrant for my phone out of SDNY” early Thursday morning.
Stockton is a Republican political operative and former writer at Breitbart. He and Bannon launched the Breitbart offshoot Big League Politics in 2017.
In 2018, he and his girlfriend, Jennifer Lawrence, spearheaded media strategy for Kolfage’s wall fundraising campaign. Stockton was not arrested and called the raid “political intimidation” in tweets on Thursday morning.
Lawrence is listed as We Build The Wall’s communications director.
This is a developing story, please refresh here for updates.
Ben Collins contributed.
