From Reuters:
“Decorated veteran at center
of U.S. fraud charges on border-wall fundraising”
Brian Kolfage lost both legs and
his right hand in a 2004 rocket attack in Iraq. He earned a Purple Heart and
became known as one of the most severely injured U.S. service members to
survive the war. It was this reputation as a war hero - showcased particularly
in conservative media - that helped him raise $27 million for President Donald
Trump’s promised “wall” on the U.S. southern border, a centerpiece of Trump’s
2016 presidential campaign. Now Kolfage is one of four defendants, including
former presidential adviser Steve Bannon, named in a federal indictment
alleging the group secretly diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars for their
personal use. The indictment was unveiled in New York Thursday. Last year,
Kolfage told Reuters that his wall initiative stemmed from a desire to bolster
American security amid an onslaught of immigrants from Mexico. “As citizens of
our country, it’s our duty to do what’s right,” the former airman said. At the
time, Kolfage, 38, said his team had coordinated closely with the White House.
Trump associate Kris Kobach - a former Kansas Secretary of State and attorney
for Kolfage’s organization - briefed the president regularly on the effort,
Kolfage said. Kolfage made a seemingly patriotic promise not to “take a penny”
from the wall venture. But U.S. attorneys from the Southern District of New
York said in their indictment that the pledge was actually cover for a fraud
and money laundering scheme that appealed to credulous donors with a story of
Kolfage’s “sainthood.” “Some of those donors wrote directly to Kolfage that
they did not have a lot of money and were skeptical of online fundraising, but
they were giving what they could because they trusted Kolfage would keep his
word,” the indictment says. Kolfage and Kobach did not respond to calls or
messages seeking comment. Kolfage’s lawyer also declined to comment, saying he
was still gathering information about the charges.
Upon leaving court in Manhattan
on Thursday where he pleaded not guilty to the charges, Bannon told reporters
the indictment was a “fiasco” meant to thwart efforts to build a wall. Reuters
was unable to reach him separately. The other two partners, Andrew Badolato and
Timothy Shea, were released on bond. They did not return calls and emails
seeking comment. A public defender in Florida who represented Badolato at the
hearing declined to comment. Trump told reporters Thursday that from what he
had read about the wall venture, he “didn’t like it” and sought to distance
himself from those charged. A White House spokesperson told Reuters Thursday
that it had nothing to add to the president’s comments. Americans all over the
country poured money into the wall project, including Benton Stevens, an
8-year-old Texas boy who set up a hot chocolate stand and website to raise
funds in early 2019. Stevens donated approximately $28,000 to Kolfage’s effort,
according to his parents, and he helped cut the ribbon on Kolfage’s first
completed wall project. Jennifer Stevens, Benton’s mother, said in an interview
with Reuters on Thursday that Kolfage’s enterprise had seemed “pretty legit,”
and it would surprise her if the charges against Kolfage were true. “Of course,
Benton doesn’t know any of this and we probably won’t let him know about the
latest news, because I don’t want him to think his efforts were - you know,
he’s 8,” she added. The wall venture was not the first - or the last - instance
in which Kolfage used his military record as a marketing tool and encountered
controversy. He became steeped in right-wing politics after his return from
Iraq and helped launch conservative news sites. His social media posts –
including false claims that President Obama’s birth certificate was fake – led
Facebook in 2018 to ban him for breaking its rules against “coordinated
inauthentic behavior,” a Facebook spokeswoman told Reuters in 2019. In an
appearance on Fox News opinion host Laura Ingraham’s show, Kolfage complained
that he was being treated unfairly by Facebook. “I sacrificed three limbs for
everybody, for your freedom, for your families’ freedom,” he said. He also
promoted a GoFundMe campaign that raised $600,000 for Brett Kavanaugh during
his contentious Supreme Court nomination. Judicial ethics guidelines prohibit
justices from accepting such donations, and in the end the money was not sent
to Kavanaugh. The group said they would give the money instead to the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and some donors withdrew their
pledges. At the end of 2018, the archdiocese told Quartz it had received just
over $320,000. The archdiocese did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
In March, as the COVID-19 pandemic spurred worldwide shortages of protective
medical gear, Kolfage told Reuters he had launched a business called America
First Medical to find and sell scarce face masks and tests to the U.S. government
and hospitals. He said his goal was to prevent price gouging and scams. The
prices for the masks he sold were steep, but he said they were lower than other
vendors’ and he would receive only modest commissions. “Our sole mission in
this whole thing is supplying American citizens with the equipment they need,”
he said, lamenting that the federal government had not responded to his mask
offers, including pitches on Instagram.
‘SEVEN FIGURES’ Kolfage was born in Detroit and grew up
in Hawaii, according to his website. In Iraq, he was nearly killed in the
rocket attack on Sept. 11, 2004. He ultimately moved to Arizona and married
Ashley Kolfage, who describes herself on Instagram as a model. Initially,
Kolfage was celebrated by members of both parties. In 2012, he attended
President Obama’s State of the Union address as the guest of then-U.S.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat. He told Reuters in the
2019 interview that he had earned “seven figures” by creating popular
conservative websites such as Freedom Daily, profiting from advertising
revenue, and then selling them. Reuters was unable to verify Kolfage’s claim
about his earnings. In December 2018, Kolfage launched a fundraising
campaign on the GoFundMe platform called “We the People Build the Wall,”
promising to turn over all money to the federal government. The appeal
immediately attracted a flood of donations, aided by attention from Fox News
and other media. Facebook removed several pages about the campaign for
violating the social media company’s misrepresentation policies, according to a
Facebook spokeswoman in 2019. Asked about the removals in the June 2019
interview with Reuters, Kolfage said he wasn’t involved in Facebook posts. “I
don’t touch the Facebook stuff, that’s our social media” people, Kolfage said.
But according to Thursday’s indictment, Kolfage told Shea, his partner and
now co-defendant, that he could justify secret payments to Kolfage as
compensation for his work on “social media.” In January 2019, Kolfage
announced his team would not donate the funds to the government but would
instead use the money to hire private contractors to build it. He rebranded the
effort as “We Build the Wall” and started a nonprofit organization with that
name. GoFundMe donors were given the option to get refunds or transfer the
funds to the new group. In the new campaign, Kolfage, Bannon and other
participants doubled down on promises that they weren’t keeping any of the
money. In January 2019, Kolfage wrote on Twitter: “I made a promise I would
NEVER take a penny….100% means 100% right?” In another Twitter post, he
asked donors to the wall to buy from his “Military Grade Coffee” business to
help him pay his bills. In March, Kolfage told Reuters he had begun
accepting $10,000 a month in salary from the wall organization, saying the
amount was modest compared to salaries paid by other nonprofits of that size.
Actually, according to the indictment, he had received a one-time payment
of $100,000 as early as February 2019, plus $20,000 a month routed through a
Bannon nonprofit and corporations that were supposedly working on the wall
project. Kolfage spent the money on items including home renovations,
cosmetic surgery, jewelry, a 2018 Land Rover and payments on a fishing boat
called “Warfighter,” the indictment alleged. GoFundMe said Friday that
it had banned Kolfage from the site given the fraud indictment.
‘QUITE DISAPPOINTING’ Some
donors to “We Build the Wall” are withholding judgment on the charges against
Kolfage. Ray Nurnberger, a lumber yard manager from Long Island, New
York, told Reuters on Thursday that they are “quite disappointing” if true. But
Nurnberger said he wouldn’t be surprised if they were false, since the
Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office “has it in for anything or anyone to do with
President Trump.” Ultimately, Kolfage’s group paid to build two sections
of wall, one about a mile and the other 3.5 miles. The project drew praise from
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, who credited him for “showing really
what capitalism is all about” at a July 2019 immigration symposium at the
southern border, according to a video posted on We Build the Wall’s website.
Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for Donald Trump Jr., said in a statement that
he had no involvement with the group besides that event. “If he and
others were deceived, the group deserves to be held accountable for their
actions,” she said. Joseph Tanfani reported from New Jersey and Julia
Harte from Washington. Heather Timmons contributed from Maine. Editing by Julie
Marquis
^ In 2019 I posted about his
GoFundMe page because at the time I, like many others, believed Kolfage was
doing good. I was wrong. He did
sacrifice a lot for our country, but turned that into something dark. He was
more concerned with getting money then for doing anything good for the US. It
is a shame when people believe in someone and they turn out to not be who you
thought. ^
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