For years, it seems like a parade of conmen has dragged the president and that prosecutors tried to pick them one by one.
Federal authorities claim that Bannon and others broke their promise to direct millions of those donated dollars to the cause of securing the border with Mexico – the cause Donald Trump called for political prominence in 2015. (Bannon’s lawyer on Thursday took a pleaded not guilty and his client was set to be released on bail, including a $ 5 million bond to be secured by $ 1.75 million in cash as immovable property.)
Upon hearing the news of yet another scandal, one’s natural reaction would probably be: of course.
Of course, the president of the former White House chief strategist is accused of swindling hundreds of thousands of Trump devotees out of more than $ 25 million of Trump’s hundreds of thousands of devotees. Of course, his nonprofit said the money would build a giant border wall, the one Trump said Mexico would pay for.
Of course, Bannon is accused of using hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses after repeatedly promising that all funds would go to that wall building.
Of course, we do not actually build many walls the wall. How many? Published reports differ, but an investigation by the Texas Tribune and Propublica (published in July, before the indictment), which paints an unflattering picture of technical snuff and accusations of political shenanigans, puts it at about 3 miles.
Of course, Bannon said, after leaving the courthouse, “This whole failure is to stop people wanting to build the wall.”
And, of course, the president distanced himself from the man who helped make him president, saying the whole idea of private wall funding was “unfavorable” and a matter of “showboating.”
Read the accusation and you will find a recitation of accusations that shock the conscience, even one damned by exposure to Trumpworld. According to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York:
- $ 1 million was sent from the group building group to one of Bannon’s separate organizations so that some of it could be “secretly” truncated on Brian Theolf The Wall founder Brian Kolfage, who was also accused. Bannon often even used hundreds of thousands to cover his own personal expenses. (Kolfage did not immediately respond to a request for comment, CNN reported Thursday).
- Kolfage promised that 100% of donations would be dedicated to erecting the walls
- Bannon and a venture capitalist named Andrew Badolato jumped into the fray after questions arose about Kolfage’s past. (Badolato did not immediately respond to requests for comment, CNN reported Thursday.) They repeatedly made public promises to potential donors that Kolfage would not receive any of WBTW’s money, and in text messages with Bannon, Badolato stated that Kolfage would leave Kolfage’s self-deprecating him what he called “holy grail” in the eyes of donors.
- Some donors “wrote directly to Kolfage that they did not have much money and were skeptical about online fundraising campaigns, but they gave what they could because they trusted that Kolfage would keep his word on how their donations were spent,” according to the charge.
The scheme announced by the prosecutors seems to be the kind of fraud that you might expect to be carried out by penny-foreclosure experts. To borrow from a phrase from Trump’s campaign, promises were made … but apparently with no intention of being kept. Instead, in remembrance of Trump’s say-it-all style of service, Bannon and the others made their pawns and, according to prosecutors, left immediately.
The indictment includes references to Bannon’s alleged desire to check how Kolfage would actually get paid. (He insists in a text to Badolato: “no deals I do not approve,” according to the indictment.)
With Bannon’s arrest, he returns to public view after a period when he seems to be disappearing. A striking remark, as rumored presence (Trump called him “Sloppy Steve”) Bannon seemed to be everywhere in the run-up to the 2016 election and in the first year of the Trump presidency. In February 2017, he appeared on the cover of Time alongside the headline “The Great Manipulator.”
Bannon, a political propagandist, sold himself to the public with a story that included his claim that he was crushed when his working class lost money in the stock market. Problem was Bannon was already dealing with his right-wing populism at the time his father lost that money. And his father had made the decidedly risky choice to buy some of the stock he sold on a seemingly bad tip – losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Bannon told an interviewer – with borrowed money. As The New Yorker’s Nicholas Lemann would conclude, Steve Bannon’s claim was ‘political mythology’.
The journey from myth-making to alleged fraud can be a very short one. Think, for example, of the so-called “Trump University” of Donald Trump. Trump agreed in 2015 to pay $ 25 million for the liability of people who said they were cheated by the ‘university’. (His lawyer said Trump had settled the case “without an admission of guilt or liability,” according to the New York Times)
He then paid a $ 2 million fine in December last year for abusing a charitable charity – the Donald J. Trump Foundation – controlled by him. The New York Attorney General’s trial in 2018 in the case, according to the Washington Post, claimed the president had illegally “used the charity money to buy paintings of himself and sports memorabilia and $ 258,000 in legal settlements. to pay for his for-profit clubs, “as do donations to political campaigns.
The foundation was closed, and the president agreed to comply with restrictions if he ever again undertakes charitable work in New York State.
Among the other Trump allies who have been accused or imprisoned, we can count the former campaign president of the president, Paul Manafort (Bannon has effectively replaced him); his former lawyer, Michael Cohen; his one-time national security adviser, Michael Flynn; Manafort Deputy Rick Gates; Representatives Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter (two early Trump supporters); and donor / political operatives Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who pleaded not guilty to criminal charges of embezzling foreign money in US elections. The two are closely linked to Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, and have helped Giuliani’s attempt to compile what he claims has damaged information about Trump’s political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to CNN reports.
In any case, these are men who are apparently promoting themselves with the kind of hype that connoisseurs of Trumpism would find famous. This is the company that holds the presidency.
Still available for viewing on the morning of Bannon’s arrest, We Build the Wall’s website is a super-patriotic mash-up that is also true to the Trump style. It includes a photo of one of Bannon’s co-defendants, Brian Kolfage with square, with a stack of medals attached to his package. Click around and you will find photos of the usual cast of controversial characters, including the president and his son Donald Jr. (which appeared at a WBTW-sponsored symposium in July 2019); the former Milwaukee County Sheriff and Trump acolyte, David Clarke, famous for his cowboy hat; and Kansas Crusader Kris Kobach, who cried over widespread voter fraud but could not find it after Trump put himself at the head of a commission dedicated to exposing it.
From the focus of the nonprofit’s wall construction to his arrest in Connecticut, aboard the hunt for exiled Chinese dissident Guo Wengui, irony abounds in faux-populist case Steven Bannon. It should be noted that investigators from the US Postal Service – widely abused by Trump because he predicts an election that will be largely conducted by e-mail vote – have been involved in the case, and that the Southern District of New York is bringing the case.
One can imagine the president’s peak over Bannon’s arrest on the day his rival Joe Biden was nominated to the Democratic National Convention. The president said during his 2016 campaign that he would hire “the best people”. Bannon is the latest in a seemingly ever-growing list of Trump associates to face federal criminal prosecutors. Talk about contradicting the boss.
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