Long Prison Terms for Crooks Who Preyed on Gullible MAGA
Nearly four years ago DCReport broke the story that the WeBuildTheWall charity was a scam, one that extracted $25 million from gullible MAGA. On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced the man who led the scam to more than four years in prison.
Donald Trump’s oldest son, Don Jr., and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, heartily endorsed the sham project. They went to the site on the Rio Grande River in New Mexico, where a contractor hired by Kolfage had built a short, flimsy, and utterly ineffective bit of fencing.
This was just one of the many big stories that DCReport has broken since we began publishing in January 2017. Again and again, on a shoestring budget we bested the best in the business. But the big news organizations credited DCReport only rarely, often reluctantly, and sometimes only after vigorous complaints. This resistance to giving DCReport credit was surprising given modern newsroom policies on acknowledging when competing news organizations broke stories.
We hope you, our readers, and especially our donors, feel proud.
Your donations add up. We use your money with care, respect, and smarts. Some of our writers were never paid. Those that were paid received token sums that never came close to the value of their work because they shared our commitment to independent reporting based on independent research.
The story that Miami writer Grant Stern broke in June 2019 was ignored by our national news organizations until after Stern’s second DCReport piece ran in August 2019, confirming that a criminal investigation by Florida charity regulators had begun. Still, neither Stern nor DCReport were credited by national news organizations with breaking either story.
The scam was launched by Brian Kolfage, a disabled veteran who lives in Florida. Kolfage saw opportunity when Congress showed no interest in funding Trump’s wall, which would have cost tens of billions of dollars and would not have stemmed the tide of Central American refugees and others seeking asylum in America.
Kolfage told donors that with private donations, his group would build a wall on the Mexico border, which is more than 1,900 miles long. Gullible MAGA gave $25 million.
Kolfage promised never to take a dime, even though he bought a fancy boat and lived high on the donated money. At least $1.7 million was diverted for such lavish living.
When writer Stern’s reporting showed that the charity was under criminal investigation, Kolfage insisted we were strong. “There’s no criminal investigation,” Kolfage wrote in an email. We can now say what we were confident was true then: that’s a lie, just one of many told by Kolfage, his confederates, and some Trump family members.
During Trump’s White House years, he diverted some federal taxpayer funds to build short sections of the wall. This wall spending was pure waste. Television news videos showed people seeking to enter our country without permission easily scaling Trump’s short wall segments while others, wielding electric chainsaws that cost less than a hundred bucks, cut through wall plates in a minute or so.
Building a wall to keep out people yearning for freedom and opportunity has continued to be a core value embraced by those who favor Trump’s vision of a white supremacist, antisemitic, and misogynist society and live in irrational fear of people whose skin is darker than their own.
Donald Trump’s oldest son, Don Jr., and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, heartily endorsed the sham project. They went to the site on the Rio Grande River in New Mexico, where a contractor hired by Kolfage had built a short, flimsy, and utterly ineffective bit of fencing.
Kolfage will spend four years and three months as a guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan who accepted his guilty plea decided on Wednesday. A confederate, financier Andrew Badolato, got three years after he fessed up.
Another confederate, Tim Shea, a Colorado businessman, will be sentenced in June.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and unofficial advisor when Trump was in office, was also charged. Bannon got off on the federal charges because Trump pardoned him. Bannon had pleaded not guilty.
Presidents can only pardon people for “offenses against the United States,” leaving those who commit criminal acts. Accepting a pardon, which can and in some cases been refused, is an acknowledgment of committing a federal crime under a 1915 Supreme Court ruling.
Bannon may still go to prison, however, because Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, is prosecuting him on New York State criminal charges.
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