Steve Bannon, a $25M Border Wall Campaign, and a GoFundMe Gone Bad

In text messages referenced in the indictment, Badolato allegedly insisted that Kolfage’s lack of compensation be included as part of the donor pitch.That altruism was understood to extend to Bannon and Badolato, as well, prosecutors argue, noting that Kolfage once posted on social media that “donations will only go to the wall” and “Board won’t see any of that money!”Ultimately, most donors allowed their contributions to funnel to We Build the Wall rather than accept a refund, under repeated assurances that all of their money would go directly to construction. Bannon, Badolato, and Shea each “received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds to build the wall,” the indictment says, which they allegedly spent on everything from personal travel to paying off credit card debt. Court documents say that Bannon specifically took in over a million dollars from We Build the Wall, some of which he used to pay Kolfage, and a “substantial portion” of which he kept.When they found out from a bank that they might be under investigation last October, Kolfage and Badolato allegedly switched over to an encrypted messaging platform. Mentions of Kolfage not taking a salary were scrubbed from the We Build the Wall website, the indictment says, and replaced with a statement that he would receive one starting January 2020.“As alleged, not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth,” said inspector-in-charge Philip R.