According to the federal indictment, the three men – Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea – collaborated with Bannon to profit from the wall-building effort, and to fund money for themselves through non-profit organizations and shell corporations, even because she would donate publicly donated dollars after constructing a boundary wall.
And all three mixed conservative causes with business ventures since long before the ‘We build the wall’ GoFundMe raised $ 25 million dollars after it went viral in 2018. None of the three responded to requests for comment from CNN.
In the wake of the indictment Thursday, President Donald Trump played down his relationship with Bannon, his former chief strategist, saying he could not handle the other suspicions. But his son Donald Trump, jr., Once attended a 2019 event in front of the wall factory, where he praised Kolfage by name and shook his hand.
Brian Kolfage
Kolfage, 38, was the public face of the We Build The Wall attempt. An Air Force veteran and Purple Heart recipient who had both his legs and his right arm amputated after being injured in a 2004 explosion in Iraq, he cut, according to several news reports, a telegenic image for the campaign for the building the walls.
Before the GoFundMe wall began, Kolfage helped run several right-wing Facebook pages and websites that shared conspiracy theories and false political news.
On one website, FreedomDaily, Kolfage urged writers on the site to post false stories with photoshop images like Hillary Clinton in handcuffs, former BuzzFeed News staff told last year. Kolfage told NBC News last year that he only managed the site’s finances and the site’s owner lived in another country, but employees told the network he ran it on a day-to-day basis. The website was filed in February 2018 for accusing the wrong man of fatally running over Protester Heather Heyer of Charlottesville with a car; Kolfage was not mentioned in the pack.
A Facebook page he ran, Right Wing News, was taken down by the company in October 2018, as part of a deletion of hundreds of pages that Facebook said violated rules against “spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.” He then started another GoFundMe page titled “Fight 4 Free Speech” to raise money for legal action against Facebook. The campaign raised about $ 73,000 but failed to reach its $ 100,000 goal, according to an archived version of its website, which is no longer online; it is unclear what happened to the money.
According to Thursday’s indictment against the partners of the walls, the co-suspects conspired to pay Kolfage a salary with money from donors, even though he publicly stated that he would not take any compensation. Kolfage spent, according to the latest, more than $ 350,000 of the donations on personal expenses, including cosmetic surgery, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, home renovations, jewelry, personal tax payments and credit card debt.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Kolfage wrote that he was “confused about how the accusation got so wrong,” and said “Democrats love a good political witch hunt before the election.” The prosecution of Kolfage and the others is being conducted by the Department of Justice.
The indictment said Kolfage used some of the money he took from the organization to make payments for a boat. The indictment also identified a boat named Warfighter as property derived from the proceeds of the suspects. Last month, Kolfage posted an Instagram video in which Warfighter took part in a “boat parade” of Trump in the panhandle of Florida.
More recently, Kolfage has been a guest on Fox News and other conservative media. He called in Bannon’s pro-Trump podcast, “War Room,” to talk across the border during an episode that aired on Wednesday, the day before the charges were announced.
Andrew Badolato
According to the indictment, Badolato, a 56-year-old Florida investor, participated in a “secret agreement” to pay Kolfage, and after Kolfage Badolato reportedly made direct payments to Kolfage’s partner, the nonprofit filed a tax return. falsely said she was paid for “media.”
Badolato, which has launched several venture capital and tech companies over the last two decades, has a personal history with Bannon that dates back at least to the early 2000s.
He wrote articles for the pro-Trump news website Breitbart in 2014 and 2016, when Bannon served as chairman of the news outlet, and talked about Hillary Clinton’s problems in the Democratic presidency and lamented the fact that he had Christmas decorations could not find with Jesus on a local CVS. He was mentioned as an associate producer on the 2016 documentary “Clinton Cash,” which Bannon produced.
Badolato and Bannon were directors of the same company, Donna Messenger Corp, according to Florida company data from 2003, and a separate company Badolato, called the USA Exchange, was named as a creditor for Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm co-founded by Bannon, according to the bankruptcies of Cambridge Analytica.
Bannon even mentioned the address of a property owned by Badolato when he registered to vote in 2016 in Sarasota County, Florida, according to an administrator with the provincial election superintendent.
The history of Badolato also includes financial struggle. He filed for bankruptcy several times, including in 2014 when he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and reported his liabilities as ranging between $ 1 million and $ 10 million. The case was dismissed that year. Late 2013 filing in a separate bankruptcy case stated he owed more than $ 15 million to creditors.
He also faces more than a dozen state and federal taxes. While some cheated a few thousand dollars, a loan filed in 2002 said Badolato owed the federal government about $ 517,000.
A lawyer for Badolato told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2018 that Badolato at that time had never been charged with a crime nor had he been the subject of any “investigation, prosecution or hearing by regulatory bodies.”
Timothy Shea
According to the indictment, Shea was involved in the early operations of the wall crowdfunding campaign, and then formed an April corporation in April 2019 to secretly filter donations from the wall-building group to himself and Kolfage – payments described as “social media” last.
A 49-year-old real estate agent in a suburb of Denver, Shea and his wife Amanda are involved in conservative causes and another political crowdfunding effort with Kolfage. According to Colorado records and his Facebook page, Shea runs Winning Energy, a pro-Trump energy drink company that sells a beverage on the website described as “12 stimulating ounces of liberal tears.” It comes in a look with a picture of Trump in a superhero costume for a cold eagle and an American flag.
Amanda Shea
listed themselves as the CFO for We Build the Wall on her Twitter page, and she told a local news website in Colorado in 2019 that she helped Kolfage set up the GoFundMe. According to an Instagram post, she and Kolfage both worked on Right Wing News, helping them set up their previous “free speech” GoFundMe.
Both Sheas have also broken a long record of federal, state and local taxes, and the pair filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
Shea appeared before a federal magistrate in Colorado on Thursday, but he did not file a lawsuit, according to the court. Amanda Shea was not charged in the indictment.
Christina Carrega of CNN contributed to this report.
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