Former Trump senior advisor and bête noire of American liberals Steve Bannon turns out to be just another third-rate … criminal:
Federal prosecutors on Thursday indicted one-time presidential aide Steve Bannon and three others on charges of taking money donated to help build a wall along the southern border, authorities said.
Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, Timothy Shea “and others orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors,” according to prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
The defendants’ online crowdfunding campaign “We Build The Wall” raised more than $25 million, with Kolfage “repeatedly and falsely assured the public that he would ‘not take a penny in salary,'” prosecutors said in a statement. And Bannon “publicly stated, ‘we’re a volunteer organization,’” prosecutors said.
But in fact, prosecutors said, the defendants took hundreds of thousands of donated dollars and used them for personal expenses. [NBC News]
Oh, sure. Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe he’ll wriggle his way free.
If Trump issues a pardon, though, then it’s an acknowledgment of guilt.
And I’m not sure how this’ll play with the Trumpian base. Maybe Bannon had failed from their collective consciousness. Or maybe he’s a receding cousin of the deity, who’s being unfairly trashed.
That’s for the more delusional members.
But, in retrospect, this is unsurprising. Criminality in Trump’s associates is not a new thing. They are, so far as I can see, uniformly motivated by greed; those that are not swiftly disassociate themselves. And they find out that being intense isn’t enough when breaking the law.
Goodbye and hello, Bannon. You are just part of the entertainment. Nothing more.
