Stephen K. Bannon is President Trump’s former top adviser.Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York Times By Alan Feuer, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser and an architect of his 2016 general election campaign, was charged on Thursday with defrauding donors to a private fund-raising effort called We Build the Wall,,
Stephen K. Bannon is President Trump’s former top adviser.Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York Times
Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser and an architect of his 2016 general election campaign, was charged on Thursday with defrauding donors to a private fund-raising effort called
We Build the Wall, which was intended to bolster one of the president’s signature initiatives: erecting a barrier on the Mexican border.With a wounded Air Force veteran and a Florida venture capitalist, Mr. Bannon conspired to cheat hundreds of thousands of donors by falsely promising that their money had been set aside exclusively toward building a new section of border wall, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan. Prosecutors said that after siphoning money from the project, Mr. Bannon plowed nearly $1 million into paying off his personal expenses.
Mr. Bannon was arrested early Thursday on a $35 million, 150-foot yacht that was off the coast of Westbrook, Conn., law enforcement officials said. Working with the Coast Guard, federal postal inspectors and special agents from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan boarded the vessel, which belonged to the exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, the officials said.
The charges, filed days before Mr. Trump was to be nominated for a second term at the Republican National Convention, marked a stark turn of fortune for Mr. Bannon, a high-living and flamboyant political strategist. He had first burst into the public eye when he was in charge of the right-wing media outlet Breitbart, where he had aligned himself with the alt-right, a loose network of groups and people who promote white identity.
Now in custody in New York, Mr. Bannon joins a growing list of Trump associates who have been charged with federal crimes, including Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer.
Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said Mr. Bannon and his three co-defendants defrauded donors to We Build the Wall by “capitalizing on their interest” in the border wall and falsely telling them that “all of that money would be spent on construction.”
The 24-page indictment, unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was by far the most politically sensitive case that Ms. Strauss has handled since she assumed her job after her predecessor, Geoffrey S. Berman, was fired in June by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bannon was expected to appear before a federal magistrate judge in New York on Thursday afternoon. Investigators from Ms. Strauss’s office and postal inspectors conducted several searches around the country on Thursday morning, at the homes of the defendants and at other locations, law enforcement officials said.
Shortly after the charges were announced, Mr. Trump sought to distance himself from Mr. Bannon and the fund-raising initiative, though the president also expressed sympathy for his former chief adviser.
“I feel very badly,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time.”
The president said he knew nothing about the multimillion-dollar campaign but quickly contradicted himself, saying he disliked it.
“I don’t like that project,” Mr. Trump said. “I thought it was being done for showboating reasons.” He called paying for the border wall privately “inappropriate.”
A White House official said Mr. Trump did not know ahead of time that Mr. Bannon was being arrested, and he was told by aides after it happened.
One of Mr. Trump’s sons, Donald Jr., publicly promoted the We Build the Wall effort at an event in 2018, calling it “private enterprise at its finest.”
Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement on Thursday that he had no involvement with the effort beyond praising it at that one event.
According to the authorities, Mr. Bannon hatched the plot to defraud the donors with three other men: Brian Kolfage, a 38-year-old Air Force veteran and triple amputee from Miramar Beach, Fla.; Andrew Badolato, 56, a venture capitalist from Sarasota, Fla.; and Timothy Shea, 49, of Castle Rock, Colo.
Mr. Kolfage and Mr. Badolato were arrested in Florida on Thursday, and Mr. Shea was arrested in Denver.
Mr. Kolfage, who lost both his legs and one of his arms during his service in Iraq, created We Build the Wall as a GoFundMe page in December 2018. It was an immediate success, raising nearly $17 million in its first week online, prosecutors said.
To persuade donors to contribute to the effort, prosecutors said, Mr. Kolfage promised them that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” and that all of the money he raised would be used “in the execution of our mission and purpose.” According to the indictment, Mr. Bannon described We Build the Wall as a “volunteer organization.”
But all of that was false, prosecutors said. Instead, they claimed, Mr. Kolfage secretly took more than $350,000 in donations and spent it on home renovations, boat payments, a luxury S.U.V., a golf cart, jewelry and cosmetic surgery.
Mr. Bannon, working through an unnamed nonprofit organization, received more than $1 million from We Build the Wall, prosecutors said, some of which he used to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses.
To conceal the illicit flow of money, prosecutors said, the four men routed payments from We Build the Wall not only through Mr. Bannon’s nonprofit group, but also through a shell company that Mr. Shea controlled.
Read the document
Mr. Bannon and three others are accused in a scheme to use funds raised for construction to pay for personal expenses.
Court papers suggested that prosecutors were in possession of several text messages between the men, including one in which Mr. Kolfage told Mr. Badolato that the payment scheme was “confidential” and should be kept on a “need to know” basis.
It remained unclear precisely when the yearlong investigation into the scheme began. But last year, a bank informed Mr. Bannon that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records related to We Build the Wall, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Prosecutors said that despite the effort’s early success, there were questions almost instantly “about Mr. Kolfage’s background” and the viability of his promises to give the money he had raised to the government to actually build Mr. Trump’s wall.
Because of these concerns, prosecutors said, GoFundMe warned Mr. Kolfage that if he did not find a “legitimate nonprofit organization” to handle the money, it would return it to the donors. Mr. Kolfage claimed that the group had determined that only $800,000 of the funds needed to be given back.
“No rules were broken,” Mr. Kolfage said in an interview last year. “Ninety-four percent of the donors we have been able to reach are opting in. We’ve reached 75 percent of all the donors so far.”
But some donors wondered what had happened to their money.
Harvey Garlotte of Hattiesburg, Miss., donated $60 to the fund and was among those who complained when he received a refund — minus the $3 he had added as a tip for the group.
In a complaint to the Florida secretary of state filed last year, Mr. Garlotte wrote that he felt he had been cheated by We Build the Wall, noting that even though Mr. Kolfage lived in Florida, he could find no record of a Florida charity registration.
“From my side of the road, Mr. Kolfage was simply using a hot button topic, a very emotional topic, and his status as a wounded veteran, for selfish and self-serving reasons and personal financial gain,” Mr. Garlotte wrote in his complaint.
As the problems with donors mounted, Mr. Kolfage said that he would establish a board of advisers for the group and incorporate it as We Build the Wall Inc.
Mr. Kolfage enlisted Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, to serve on the board. Mr. Kobach, a longtime Trump supporter and a prominent immigration hard-liner, was not named in the indictment.
Mr. Kolfage also brought in Mr. Bannon, who had joined Mr. Trump’s campaign as chief executive officer in August 2016 and became the White House’s chief strategist after Mr. Trump was elected.
Prosecutors said Mr. Bannon was by then already working with Mr. Badolato on a separate project: a nonprofit group dedicated to “promoting economic nationalism and American sovereignty.”
And within days of becoming involved with the wall-building effort, the two men took “significant control” of its day-to-day activities, prosecutors said, including its “finances, messaging, donor outreach and general operations.”
In January 2019, prosecutors said, the group announced that it was changing its mission and would seek to build a wall privately. The group told its donors that they would have to “opt in” to the altered plan, prosecutors said.
Several times, prosecutors said, Mr. Kolfage falsely assured his donors that every dime they gave him would go to the wall.
“It’s not possible to steal the money,” he said at one point, according to the indictment. “We have an advisory committee. I can’t touch that money. It’s not for me.”
But prosecutors contended that Mr. Bannon and Mr. Badolato started making secret payments to Mr. Kolfage in February 2019 through Mr. Bannon’s nonprofit group.
Some of the payments, prosecutors said, were made to Mr. Kolfage’s wife and were disguised on tax forms as “media” expenses.
Stephanie Saul and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Tuesday overturned a ban prohibiting US immigration authorities from arresting undocumented immigrants at courthouses in Massachusetts. In 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) formalized a policy of attempting to arrest undocumented immigrants when they appeared at state courthouses for judicial,
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Tuesday overturned a ban prohibiting US immigration authorities from arresting undocumented immigrants at courthouses in Massachusetts.
In 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) formalized a policy of attempting to arrest undocumented immigrants when they appeared at state courthouses for judicial proceedings. Two Massachusetts district attorneys, the public defender’s office and a non-profit immigrant advocacy organization filed a lawsuit against ICE and asked for a preliminary injunction against the practice. They claimed that ICE was in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and lacked authority to make civil arrests at courts. The district court agreed, and granted an injunction last year.
At issue is a claim that the INA implicitly incorporates a common law privilege that protects those attending court from being subject to civil arrest. While nothing in the text of the INA prohibits these types of courthouse arrests, the plaintiffs argued that the law must be read in light of the nonderogation canon, a method of statutory construction that holds that courts must assume Congress is aware of long-standing common law principles and, absent express language to the contrary, intends to keep them.
Judge Bruce Selya wrote Tuesday that “the nonderogation canon does not give courts carte blanche to read a grab bag of common law rules into federal statutes simply to effectuate what those courts may perceive as good policy.” The circuit court held that the nonderogation canon applies if the facts of the common law rule and the statute in question are sufficiently analogous. The common law prohibited civil arrests at court by private litigants, while here the arrests are being carried out by a government agency. The panel vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded the matter back to the district court.
Rachael Rollins, district attorney for Suffolk County and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that “this fight is far from over” and that the plaintiffs “are absolutely on the right side of justice here.”
President Donald Trump’s ban on “non-essential” border travel isn’t slowing down traffic coming from Mexico. Since the March 20 order was extended to Sept. 21, volumes have increased and sharply in some areas. San Ysidro, the busiest port of entry in California, saw a 72 percent rise in northbound pedestrian crossings from April to July.,
President Donald Trump’s ban on “non-essential” border travel isn’t slowing down traffic coming from Mexico. Since the March 20 order was extended to Sept. 21, volumes have increased and sharply in some areas.
San Ysidro, the busiest port of entry in California, saw a 72 percent rise in northbound pedestrian crossings from April to July. The number of private vehicle passengers rose 62 percent, and the number of private vehicles increased 47 percent.
Pedestrians and private-vehicle passengers coming through San Ysidro combined for a total of 1,693,338 crossings in July, compared to 1,031,906 in April.
El Paso, the biggest border crossing in Texas, recorded a whopping 220 percent increase in pedestrians from April to July. Vehicle passenger counts were up 106 percent, with the number of vehicles climbing 79 percent.
Pedestrians and vehicle passengers at El Paso combined for 963,457 crossings in July, compared to 419,046 in April.
The tallies by the U.S. Department of Transportation include individuals who enter the country multiple times per month. The crossings may or may not be “essential”; U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not reported how many people are turned back.
But following a pattern FAIR reported on last month, entries into this country are increasing substantially at the southern border, even as Americans remain under coronavirus restrictions.
U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, cited five- and six-hour delays at ports of entry as border agents focus on “essential travel.” He said many were crossing to shop, dine and visit families. “Such irresponsible behavior is exacerbating the health crisis,” he said.
Border counties in Texas have reported spikes in COVID cases and hospitalizations. Officials in Starr and Hidalgo counties started imposing curfews and voluntary stay-at-home directives in July, urging that non-essential business activities be curtailed or suspended.
Yet despite presidential edicts and local pleas, border traffic keeps building. At current rates, crossings will be back to pre-COVID levels by the time the administration’s non-essential travel ban expires — if they’re not already.
A Black former U.S. diplomat recently shared her experience of months of racial profiling by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials while she was stationed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She was tasked with enforcing U.S. immigration law, but nevertheless found herself racially profiled and discriminated against by U.S. immigration,
A Black former U.S. diplomat recently shared her experience of months of racial profiling by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials while she was stationed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She was tasked with enforcing U.S. immigration law, but nevertheless found herself racially profiled and discriminated against by U.S. immigration authorities.
The problem became so severe that she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and had to quit her job. Unfortunately, this is just one example of immigration officials’ long history of racism at the border.
CBP Racially Profiles a U.S. Diplomat
In 2018, Tianna Spears was a new diplomat stationed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She frequently crossed the border into El Paso, Texas, as thousands of other U.S. citizens do every day. However, she soon found that she was treated differently than others by CBP officers at the border.
Spears estimates that CBP officers required her to go through “secondary inspection” approximately two out of every three times that she crossed. This outcome should have been extremely rare given her diplomatic passport and SENTRI card allowing for expedited clearance. Her non-Black colleagues never had similar experiences.
Spears repeatedly raised the issue to CBP and her consulate supervisors, but the situation only worsened. She reports that CBP officers sometimes did not believe she was a diplomat and accused her of stealing her car. Their questioning was aggressive and threatening.
The mental health effects of the harassment eventually forced her to leave her job and return to the United States.
CBP Has a Long History of Racism
There is a long and documented history of immigration officials engaging in racial profiling and harassment at ports of entry.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Mexican citizens crossing into El Paso had to undergo a delousing process. CBP officials stripped them, shaved their heads, and forced them to take a bath in gasoline. This discriminatory process was based on a stereotype that Mexicans were dirty and diseased.
Much more recently, the Office of the Inspector General found that CBP improperly retaliated against one of their officers that reported misconduct he observed within the agency. The officer stated that CBP was disproportionately targeting Black drivers for further inspection at the ports of entry between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada.
But CBP’s history of racial profiling is not limited to people crossing the border. The agency also has the power to stop and question people within 100 miles of borders or coastlines. Approximately two-thirds of Americans live within this area, which is sometimes called the Constitution-free zone.
Border Patrol Targets People Who “Look Mexican”
CBP’s activities within the border zone are performed by one of its component agencies, the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol has targeted border residents appearing to be of Mexican descent for almost 100 years. Throughout that time, people going about their daily lives near the border have been racially profiled, stopped, and interrogated—regardless of U.S. citizenship or immigration status.
In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that “Mexican appearance” could not be the sole reason a roving Border Patrol officer stopped someone. It could, however, be a “relevant factor” in deciding whether to do so.
The Border Patrol runs permanent and temporary checkpoints on roads leading away from the border. A 2015 American Civil Liberties Union report Guilty Until Proven Innocent revealed that CBP officers working at checkpoints racially profiled and even interfered with the medical care of border residents.
Residents of Arivaca, Arizona conducted observations of the checkpoint at the entrance to their community. Latino-occupied vehicles were more than 26 times more likely to be required to show identification while passing through the checkpoint.
In 2014, the Department of Justice modified its guidance on officers discriminating based on race or ethnicity. Previous loopholes gave law enforcement permission to discriminate. However, other loopholes remain, including some for CBP activities at or near the border.
Stories like that of U.S. diplomat Spears serve as examples of the historical and institutional racism within CBP and the U.S. immigration system more broadly. We need increased transparency and oversight to force cultural changes within CBP. These significant changes are necessary to prevent further injustices and ensure the Constitution applies equally to all people.
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