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By John Cassidy
Four years ago, yesterday, Paul Manafort resigned as Donald Trump’s crusade manager in 2016, just days after the New York Times reported that records on display in Kiev indicated that the veteran Republican political representative and street vendor had earned $12.7 million in money from a pro-Russian. . controlled by former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. Eric Trump told Fox News that his father did not need the “distraction” of Manafort’s disorders to hang on his blanks offering. To upgrade Manafort, Trump appointed Kellyanne Conway as his crusade manager, and Steve Bannon, the right-wing media provocateur who was then the head of Breitbart News, as the crusade’s executive leader.
Today, Manafort is a convicted criminal. He has lately been detained at home, serving a seven-year sentence for tax evasion and conspiracy, forgery of witnesses and violations of foreign lobbying. In May, the Bureau of Prisons released him from a federal criminal in Florida due to a physical condition similar to coronavirus. Earlier this week, it returned to the news when a Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election described it as a “serious threat of counterintelligence,” in part because one of its long-standing commercial components was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer. .
Bannon is not in prison, but faces fraud and cash-laundering charges that can take him to jail for 40 years. On Thursday, federal agents arrested him on a luxury motor yacht moored in Westbrook, Connecticut. Later that day, he gave the impression of being handcuffed in a Manhattan court, where he pleaded that he and three other men had secretly embezzled millions of dollars that had been donated to an online GoFundMe crusade to fund the structure of Trump’s wall should not be blamed. across the southern border. A sentencing issued Bannon on bail for $5 million, ordering him to stay away from personal yachts and jets.
The most notable thing about the indictment that the Southern District of New York released on Thursday is how dirty the irregularity it alleges is. For years, Bannon, who began as a naval officer and investment banker at Goldguy Sachs, presented himself as a right-wing populist opinion leader, a guy deeply interested in history, philosophy and economic source chains, as well as destructive business. day-to-day politics, and screw the Democrats. If the accusations in the Southern District complaint are true, the long-term philosopher king is just another criminal who seeks to exploit Trump supporters for his own monetary gain.
Manafort, who, along with Roger Stone and Charles Black, practically invented Washington’s lobbying career for stale foreign governments, was also a con man, of course. To give him what is his due, – or perhaps more than his due – he did not seek to provide his theft of money as a component of a broader political cause. Even his involvement in Trump’s crusade gave the impression of being largely an industrial attempt arrangement, or perhaps a service to some of his Eastern European benefactors, with whom he was looking for bills he believed he should. A few days after his appointment for the crusade, he sent an email to a colleague in Kiev: “How can we heal ourselves?”
Bannon different. During the Trump campaign, he and Trump presented themselves, as defenders of an ordinary American class, sacrificed on the altar of globalization. After being expelled from Trump’s White House in August 2017, at least in component for making critical comments about managing journalists, he extended his ambitions to Europe, where he sought to build a network of far-right components. (It didn’t go very far). He also teamed up with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui to push for the regime’s replacement in China. (According to press reports, the bannon of the arrested yacht belongs to Guo).. He also continued to move in this country, releasing a regular podcast, which went from “War Room: Impeachment” to “War Room: Pandemic”.
The Southern District indictment provides a window into some of Bannon’s less visual activities. In December 2018, he says, Brian Kolfage, an air force veteran, triple amputee and Trump supporter, created a GoFundMe page called “We People Build the Wall.” With Congress thwarted by Trump’s plans, the crusade attracted a lot of attention from the conservative media and the money flowed. According to the indictment, GoFundMe’s page temporarily raised about twenty million dollars from thousands of other donors. (In the end, it grossed about twenty-five million dollars.)
Concerns arose about Kolfage’s background and how cash would be used to build the wall. According to the indictment, the online crowdfunding page told Kolfage that, unless it only identifies a valid nonprofit that gets the budget raised, the site will return the cash to donors. The indictment goes on describing how Bannon and some other right-wing activist, a venture capitalist named Andrew Badolato, have worried about Kolfage and “made sense of the organization and day-to-day activities of the fundraising campaign, adding their funding, messages, donor awareness and general operations.” Specifically, in collaboration with Kolfage, they brought a new 501 (c) (4) non-profit segment, We Build the Wall, Inc.,” to which they proposed that the cash that had been raised through “People Build the Wall” can be transferred.”
Having triumphed over this obstacle, the alleged conspirators set out to raise more coins. To that end, they promised potential donors that a hundred, consistent with the penny of coin donations, would go directly to the structure project, without cuts to Kolfage or any other. “These statements were false,” the accusation states. “KOLFAGE secretly took over $350,000 in budget that had been donated to We Build the Wall for non-public use, while BANNON, through a non-profit organization under its control, earned more than $1,000,000 from We Build the Wall, which BANNON used to, among other things, secretly pay KOLFAGE and Canopy thousands of dollars in non-public expenses of banNON. Among the pieces in which the defendants spent coins were “travels, hotels, customer passes and non-public credit card debts,” indictments.
Prosecutors also allege that the defendants tried to hide the bills they earned by transporting some of them through a ghost company under the direction of Timothy Shea. In addition, they allege that in 2019, after defendants discovered that We Build the Wall was the subject of a criminal investigation, they “took additional steps to hide the alleged previous fraud scheme,” adding that they used encrypted messaging services and fled fundraising. The campaign’s online page indicates that Kolfage was not compensated. A press release stated that the four defendants were “all charged with a conspiracy charge to devote electronic fraud and a conspiracy charge to dedicate cash laundering, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.”
In a move as predictable as the sun emerging to the east, Trump temporarily sought to distance himself from We Build the Wall and Bannon. Even for a concealer as experienced as he was, it was a complicated sale. In July last year, the president’s son, Donald, Jr., gave the impression on a fundraising time for the organization, along with Bannon and other right-wing activists. On Thursday, the Trump Organization issued a saying that Donald, Jr., “the organization’s earlier praise was based on what had led him to believe about his intended goal of helping build the wall on our southern border and whether he and others were deceived. , the organization deserves to be held responsible for its actions.”
There is an even more direct link between We Build the Wall and Trump. In January last year, Kris Kobach, the former Kansas state secretary who served on the group’s advisory board, told the New York Times that Trump had given him his seal of approval. “I spoke to the president and the ‘We’re building the wall’ effort appeared,” Kobach told a reporter. The president said that “the assignment has my blessing, and you can tell the media. “”
This is the first time questions have been asked about Trump’s fundraising efforts, of course, or whether Investigators from the Southern District have taken an interest in them. In 2018, they introduced an investigation into whether Trump’s inaugural committee had incorrectly spent part of the one hundred and seven million dollars it had raised, most commonly from wealthy donors. The Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation originated from documents seized through the federal government from Michael Cohen, Trump’s non-public attorney, who eventually pleaded guilty to tax evasion and financial violations of the crusades. In February 2019, prosecutors issued a subpoena to appear before the opening committee. It is not known what has happened to the investigation since.
Trump’s re-election crusade, which raised heaps of millions of dollars, also caught the eye. In May of this year, HuffPost reported that the crusade had paid heeding lump sums to some of its most sensitive employees, namely the crusade manager at the time, Brad Parscale. Based on an investigation of federal presentations, S.V. HuffPost. He found that between January 2017 and March 2020, corporations controlled through Parscale had raised $38.9 million from the crusade. D’te says:
For Parscale, who just a few years ago designed Internet sites in San Antonio for Trump properties, among other clients, the sudden wealth gave him a $2.4 million waterfront home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a couple of $1 million condos, a new $400,000 boat logo, and another part a million dollars in luxury cars. adding a Range Rover and a Ferrari.
Parscale is not the only Trump associate who benefits from the generosity of the crusade. In February 2019, ABC News, introducing the crusade’s financial records, reported that the crusade “spent nearly $100,000 from donors to pay the legal expenses of the company representing Jared Kushner.” A spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer told ABC News that the legal paintings “were made on behalf of Trump’s crusade to protect themselves against a political and baseless case presented through the DNC,” and claimed that Kushner “personally paid all of his legal expenses separately. costs.” new to date. »
Most of the cash donated to We Build the Wall, and Trump’s re-election crusade so far, has been in the form of modest sums, most of which have been donated through others with modest means. An apparent question is: at what point will Trump supporters come to perceive that the MAGA motion is, for the other people who organize and execute it, largely a lucrative scam? Unfortunately, the answer is probably never.
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