{"id":11343,"date":"2020-08-20T14:42:37","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T14:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/?p=11343"},"modified":"2020-08-20T14:42:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T14:42:37","slug":"trump-ally-steve-bannon-charged-with-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/20\/trump-ally-steve-bannon-charged-with-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Ally, Steve Bannon charged with fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(CNN) <\/em>New York federal prosecutors on Thursday charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser Steve Bannon and three others with defrauding donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of a fundraising campaign purportedly aimed at supporting Trump’s border wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bannon was arrested Thursday morning, according to a spokesman for the US attorney’s office. Bannon’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bannon will make his initial court appearance in New York later Thursday, according to the US attorney’s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four men are indicted for allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to a group called We Build the Wall and using the funds for personal expenses, among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to prosecutors, Bannon, through a non-profit identified as Non-Profit-1, used more than $1 million from We Build the Wall to “secretly” pay another defendant, Brian Kolfage, and cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bannon’s personal expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bannon, Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As alleged, the defendants 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,” Acting Manhattan US Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement. “While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alyssa Farah, the White House director of strategic communications, declined to comment on the indictment Thursday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(CNN) New York federal prosecutors on Thursday charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser Steve Bannon and three others with defrauding donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of a fundraising campaign purportedly aimed at supporting Trump’s border wall. Bannon was arrested Thursday morning, according to a spokesman for the US attorney’s office. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Steve-Bannon.jpg?fit=780%2C438&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}