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Donald Trump Jr. attended an event in New Mexico in 2018 and stood alongside a man named Brian Kolfage, who was helping lead an initiative called We Build the Wall. The then-president’s son said at the time, “What you guys are doing is amazing.”
On the surface, what those guys appeared to be doing was an ambitious project: We Build the Wall said it was raising private funds to build barriers along the U.S./Mexico border. But below the surface, what those guys were actually doing really was “amazing,” but not in a good way.
The Associated Press reported yesterday that two of the men who oversaw the operation were sentenced to prison “for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors.”
Brian Kolfage, a decorated Air Force veteran who lost both of his legs and an arm in the Iraq War, previously pleaded guilty for his role in siphoning donations from the We Build the Wall campaign. A co-defendant, financier Andrew Badolato, was also sentenced to three years for aiding the effort. He had also pleaded guilty. ... Kolfage and Badolato were also ordered to pay $25 million in restitution to the victims.
Chances are, most Americans aren’t familiar with Kolfage and Badolato, but it’s a safe bet you’ve heard of their former partner: Steve Bannon.
In fact, when Bannon was criminally indicted in August 2020, it had nothing to do with the work he’d done for Donald Trump and everything to do with his role in the We Build the Wall project.
For those who might need a refresher, We Build the Wall came into existence partway through Trump’s term, ostensibly created to supplement the Republican White House’s efforts to construct barriers along the U.S./Mexico border. While the Trump administration used taxpayer money to construct fencing, We Build the Wall said it would raise private funds from donors in pursuit of the same goal.
As a high-profile political player, Bannon’s role as a board member of the outfit lent it credibility. It wasn’t long before We Build the Wall raised $25 million for the private venture.
The project almost immediately ran into troubles. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported, for example, that structural issues raised concerns that the conservative outfit delivered a defective product.
The whole endeavor became so problematic that Trump tried to distance himself from the group and its endeavor. He was, by all appearances, brazenly lying: The Texas Tribune reported that Trump claimed the privately funded border wall “was built to ‘make me look bad,’ even though the project’s builder and funders are all Trump supporters.”
For his part, Bannon told the public that We Build The Wall would function as “a volunteer organization.” Federal prosecutors disagreed: The Justice Department charged Bannon and his associates in August 2020, alleging that they “defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.”
In other words, according to prosecutors, We Build the Wall leaders pocketed some of the money they said would go toward the border project.
We now know that at least some of those criminal allegations were true: Kolfage and Badolato pleaded guilty and are headed to prison. Bannon, however, effectively received a get-out-of-jail-free card from his former boss: On the evening of Jan. 19, 2021, Trump’s last full day in the White House, the then-president pardoned Bannon.
As yesterday’s developments reminded us, Bannon’s former associates were not as fortunate.
The larger case, however, isn’t over just yet. As the AP’s report added, “Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought new, state charges against Bannon last year. He is awaiting trial. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses. Bannon has called the case ‘nonsense.’”
This post revises our related earlier coverage.