Steve Bannon's arrest shines a light on web of
anti-immigration conservatives
List of well-known names associated with We Build the
Wall non-profit group is a roll call of top figures in Republican circles
Daniel
Strauss
@danielstrauss4
Thu 20 Aug
2020 16.47 BSTLast modified on Thu 20 Aug 2020 19.31 BST
Steve Bannon’s
indictment in a scheme to defraud donors to a fundraising campaign to help
build Donald Trump’s wall on the southern border cast a spotlight on a web of
prominent figures adored in conservative and anti-immigration circles.
On
Thursday, Bannon and other leaders of the We Build the Wall non-profit group
were indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan for scheming to “defraud
hundreds of thousands of donors” in relation to the online fundraising
campaign.
But the
list of well-known names associated with We Build the Wall goes far beyond the
figure of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and populist firebrand Bannon.
The group’s
website is a roll call of top figures in Republican and conservative circles.
It lists
Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state and a prominent Trump
cheerleader, as its attorney general. Bannon was the advisory board chairman.
Erik Prince, founder of the private military contractor Blackwater USA, is a
member of the organization’s advisory board. The former Colorado congressman
Tom Tancredo, an icon in conservative anti-immigration circles, is also on the
advisory board, as is former Milwaukee county sheriff Dave Clarke and former
Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling.
Bannon, the
former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign who would later go
on to serve as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House before being fired,
was one of four names in charges unsealed on Thursday.
Kobach at
one point used We Build the Wall’s email list to fundraise for his campaign for
Senate. In 2019 Kobach said the non-profit had the support of Donald Trump and
the president had given it his “blessing”. On Thursday, in response to the
indictment, Trump said: “I don’t like that project. I thought it was being done
for showboating reasons.”
Trump also
said he felt “very badly” about Bannon in response to the news but he hadn’t
“been dealing with him for a very long period of time”.
Audrey
Strauss, the acting district attorney for the southern district of New York,
said Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea engaged in a
scheme to defraud donors to the fundraising campaign. We Build the Wall raised
$25m to help fund a wall across the southern border of the United States. The
wall has been Trump’s signature proposal since the beginning of his
presidential campaign. It remains unfinished.
According
to the charges, the men used the hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors
to the fundraising campaign “in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s
public representations”. Kolfage took $350,000 “for his personal use” and
Bannon funneled over $1m from the campaign through a non-profit. The men,
according to the charges, set up a system to route the donations through a
non-profit and shell company handled by Shea.
The men
used “fake invoices” and sham “vendor” arrangements” in the process,
prosecutors said.
In
particular, to induce donors to donate to the campaign, Kolfage repeatedly and
falsely assured the public that he would “not take a penny in salary or
compensation” and that “100% of the funds raised … will be used in the
execution of our mission and purpose” because, as Bannon publicly stated,
“we’re a volunteer organization.”
The arrest
has another tie-in to the trending news of the day: the United States Postal
Service.
Bannon was
taken into custody by law enforcement officials with the USPS. Trump, recently
has been arguing that the postal service is a flawed vessel for handling the
expected wave of mail-in and absentee ballots that voters will cast for the
November 2020 elections. Trump’s postmaster general has taken steps to
streamline the organization, moves which critics argue is a thinly veiled
attempt to hamstring the service and suppress mail-in voting.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário