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Steve Bannon Indicted


Hugo Stiglitz

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The original document from Page 1 listed: Brian Kolfage, Steve Bannon, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea. I'm not sure what it means regarding Schilling but in the paperwork after their names is listed "and others," so I assume he is with the unnamed. The description of how they routed the money through the shell company I found interesting because it mentions text messages. So, how did they get these guys phone messages?

6 minutes ago, Tuco said:

Yeah, I don't think this is a coincidence.  I think Guo is likely the big fish here.  I'm guessing it was that investigation that was keeping Bannon "at sea."

Russian and Chinese oligarchs circling like the sharks Trump fears but still puts out the sign: America For Sale, come and place your bid.

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23 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, guys.

 

Social Media cracks me up. I didnt even know who this Dena Grayson is, so I looked her up

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Dena Grayson, MD, PhD is a physician, researcher, and expert on Ebola and other viral pandemic threats. Her biomedical research has focused on the development of new medicines to treat serious diseases including cancer, Ebola, Yellow Fever, and rare genetic diseases, and FDA-approved medicines for high cholesterol and hereditary angioedema. In 2016, she ran as a Democrat to represent Florida’s 9th Congressional district.

Dr. Grayson’s insightful commentary regarding the deadly Coronavirus pandemic has been featured on FOX News, BBC World News, Sky News, Sinclair, PBS, and other national and local affiliates and in the Boston Globe, and she has been cited in publications by The New York Times, Associated Press, Fortune, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Time, Vox, Business Insider, and other leading news organizations. Dr. Grayson has also made appearances on Dr. Phil and The Doctors.

Its just funny to me that she's out there trying to break news stories on Curt Shilling getting arrested. Presumably if she didnt break the story, she feared that it would not get picked up by any other news organization and the world would never know. Luckily, she was able to take time from her busy schedule researching Ebola to update us on Curt Schilling.

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3 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Social Media cracks me up. I didnt even know who this Dena Grayson is, so I looked her up

Its just funny to me that she's out there trying to break news stories on Curt Shilling getting arrested. Presumably if she didnt break the story, she feared that it would not get picked up by any other news organization and the world would never know. Luckily, she was able to take time from her busy schedule researching Ebola to update us on Curt Schilling.

If autopart store managers want to pretend to be epidemiologists, then it makes since that epidemiologists should start following criminally link sports figures.  I assume the next time a need wiper blades, Bob Costas will be there to help me out to complete the circle. 

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2 minutes ago, Tuco said:

If autopart store managers want to pretend to be epidemiologists, then it makes since that epidemiologists should start following criminally link sports figures.  I assume the next time a need wiper blades, Bob Costas will be there to help me out to complete the circle. 

We covered this last week, Tuco. Dr. Fauci is the go to guy for wiper blades. Fauci's out for surgery (throat polyps)  for the next two weeks though, so you might need to ring up Larry Kudlow, it's his side job.

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3 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Unfortunately, virulent racism isn't against the law. 

In too many cases, virulent racism is the law. 
 

Also, the character arc of Curt Schilling is pretty amazing. Bloody sock to a fraudulent and racist scam.

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Sloppy Steve screwed by staties. Seriously, it shouldn’t be a crime to so obviously grift from morons. 
If I’m Brannon my argument is “your honor- these racists and rubes don’t deserve to hold onto their money- I was doing them a favor by taking it”. 
I’d dismiss that case. 

Edited by Wulaw Horn
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1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

not to jinx it, but this scandal might be getting close to Hannity as well. These are all characters that he associates with or has on-air. Does anyone know if he ever highlighted this Build the Wall group on his show? If so, I imagine he would have been expecting a kickback at some point.

Oh man, if Hannity goes down, does this mean he'll take down Florida Georgia Line with him?

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah.....that will be TOTALLY effective when he has a chinese-owned private plane that doesn't give a rat's ass about our passport requirements.

He's also restricted from flying on private aircraft and yacht travel.

But, I'll let you continue to marinate in your tragic fantasies that all of these guys will get away with it because....reasons.

Edited by SizzleChest
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Just now, SizzleChest said:

He's also restricted from flying on private aircraft and yachts.

But, I'll let you continue to marinate in your tragic fantasies that all of these guys will get away with it because....reasons.

Oh....he's PROHIBITED.  Well, that should do it.

I mean, he was prohibited by law from ripping a shitload of people off....yet that didn't seem to slow him down.

He is a physical flight risk -- he has access to a shitload of money and private transportation that can swoop him out of the country.  Passport confiscation and prohibition on private aircraft mean jack shit.

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200.gif
Schilling got pinched too!?  Oh man, this day just keeps getting better.  I'm going to break out my rosary beads in hopes that Prince and Kobach are on deck.  The grifting Sheriff would be a nice quail egg on top of this turd burger. 

Is it wrong to hope that the sheriff resisted arrest and is killed while in custody on the ground? I mean, just for the trumpkin brains imploded that black lives may matter.
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8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh....he's PROHIBITED.  Well, that should do it.

I mean, he was prohibited by law from ripping a shitload of people off....yet that didn't seem to slow him down.

He is a physical flight risk -- he has access to a shitload of money and private transportation that can swoop him out of the country.  Passport confiscation and prohibition on private aircraft mean jack shit.

Agreed.  Preet Bharara was just on CNN talking about how Bannon wouldn't be considered a flight risk because he has ties to the U.S. and reason to clear his name.  I was like, "He also has a private plane and money for enough plastic surgery to disappear to a tropical paradise instead of facing 40 years in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.

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9 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Agreed.  Preet Bharara was just on CNN talking about how Bannon wouldn't be considered a flight risk because he has ties to the U.S. and reason to clear his name.  I was like, "He also has a private plane and money for enough plastic surgery to disappear to a tropical paradise instead of facing 40 years in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.

Bharara isn't wrong.  

Bannon's whole persona is wrapped up in maximizing nationalism in the US.  He'll fight this, and may win.  To say he's just going to flee and remain a fugitive from justice is an admission of guilt.  The last thing Bannon ever wants is to be wrong.  He's been astoundingly careful in avoiding criminal indictment, even though he's associated with several highly questionable people.

When Breitbart canned him and the Mercers cut him off in 2018, he had to find new sources of funding for his "cause".  He picked the wrong guy and may go to jail or be forced to flip for it.

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28 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh....he's PROHIBITED.  Well, that should do it.

I mean, he was prohibited by law from ripping a shitload of people off....yet that didn't seem to slow him down.

He is a physical flight risk -- he has access to a shitload of money and private transportation that can swoop him out of the country.  Passport confiscation and prohibition on private aircraft mean jack shit.

michael-keaton.gif

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Gotta keep that grift game going...unless you get arrested first:

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-we-build-the-wall-huckster-is-accused-of-duping-donors-turns-out-he-planned-to-sell-their-data-too?ref=home?ref=home

 

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Federal prosecutors on Thursday arrested former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage, the head of a nonprofit seeking to privately finance construction of a southern border wall, and accused them of illegally using that nonprofit to enrich themselves. 

But the sums the two men allegedly extracted from the organization just scratched the surface of their grandiose plans to make money off the effort. As he was using his group, We Build The Wall, to compile millions of email addresses and phone numbers, Kolfage was also plotting ways to use that data to start a Republican fundraising firm. The venture had gotten far enough that earlier this year, he was already shopping around for potential clients.

 

 

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Kolfage, a triple amputee Air Force veteran, described his plans to a Republican consultant in an email written early this year and seen by The Daily Beast. His previously-unreported efforts to start a political consulting business using the resources acquired and built by his nonprofit show the additional ways—beyond the direct cash payments alleged in the federal criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday—that Kolfage planned to enrich himself using a group that allegedly duped donors with a promise to help fulfill one of President Donald Trump’s signature proposals. 

Efforts to reach Kolfage were not successful. An inquiry sent to We Build The Wall went unanswered.

 

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In the email to the Republican consultant, who showed the message to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about Kolfage’s legal situation, Kolfage bragged that the voter contact list in his possession was likely the third biggest in Republican politics, surpassed only by those controlled by Trump himself and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). He said it contained names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other data points about donors to his nonprofit who Republican candidates could hit up for cash.

Kolfage proposed a revenue-sharing agreement, whereby he would keep 50 percent of all the funds raised by the campaigns and groups that used his list.

 

Spoiler

Kolfage’s pitch to the Republican consultant, who does digital fundraising for Republican candidates, suggests that Kolfage was seeking to rent the list to other vendors that work with political campaigns, rather than to the campaigns directly. That’s a common arrangement for digital fundraising vendors, but it makes it difficult to track down which, or how many, campaigns have rented the We Build The Wall list.

But at least one political candidate appears to have done so. The Daily Beast reported last year that Kris Kobach—the former Kansas secretary of state and We Build The Wall general counsel—sent a fundraising email to that list asking for donations to his ultimately failed 2020 Senate campaign. Legal experts told The Daily Beast at the time that that solicitation almost certainly violated federal campaign finance laws, either by failing to disclose that the campaign had paid for its use of the list, or by constituting an illegal in-kind contribution from the nonprofit to the campaign. The ethics watchdog group Common Cause subsequently filed legal complaintsagainst both Kobach’s campaign and We Build The Wall over the fundraising appeal.

At the time, the Kobach campaign blamed the email on a vendor, which it refused to name. FEC records show that a few weeks after the Kobach fundraising email in question, his campaign began paying Stockton Strategies, the firm run by We Build The Wall aide Dustin Stockton, for “online fundraising services” and revenue-sharing fees.

On Thursday morning, as federal agents scooped up Bannon and Kolfage, Stockton tweeted that he “was raided by SWAT” and that his phone was seized but that he was not arrested. He did not respond to inquiries about the We Build The Wall email list, the Kobach campaign’s use of it, or about the wave of arrests and charges against others involved with the group.

Federal prosecutors accuse Bannon, Kolfage, and two of their alleged co-conspirators of raising money for We Build The Wall with promises that not “a single penny” would be paid to Kolfage, and that all of the money raised by the group would directly finance its construction of a southern border wall. But according to the criminal complaint, Kolfage and Bannon pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, routing the funds through shell companies and a nonprofit that Bannon controlled in order to mask the transfers.

Kolfage used that money on various personal expenses, prosecutors say, including upkeep on his boat, Warfighter, which Kolfage proudly boarded during a record-breaking “boat parade” in Florida this week in support of Trump’s reelection.

Though the $350,000 in We Build The Wall funds that prosecutors say Kolfage pocketed was no small sum, brokering a donor list as large as the one he described to the Republican consultant this year would likely have represented a significant source of additional income.

 

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6 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

I wonder what the overlap is between the people who gave to this and people who give to the NRA.  Some people are just begging to be scammed.

pretty much the entire 40% of the voting public in America that is scared to death of the modern world they live in

Grifters gonna grift. Dumbs gonna get dumbed. Always will be. 

Gotta somehow Golder Corral these folks and get them back to being happy with something 

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10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Unless you had assurance of a full pardon (which he might), if you had access to those things, had no family here, and faced 20 years of Federal time.....wouldn't YOU flee?  I sure as hell would.

He's not Manafort (crooked as fuck) or Stone (same as Manafort, but even he never flew the coop) or Cohen (family in the US, turned on Trump, wrote a book, etc.).  Bannon believes his own bullshit so firmly, he wants to make his stupid films, and he actually needs to be in the room when he puts his little coalitions together.  He can't do that effectively as a fugitive.  That weakens him horribly.

Bannon will seek exoneration, a pardon, or will flip to gain immunity if he has enough of what SDNY wants.

Edited by SizzleChest
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3 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

not to jinx it, but this scandal might be getting close to Hannity as well. These are all characters that he associates with or has on-air. Does anyone know if he ever highlighted this Build the Wall group on his show? If so, I imagine he would have been expecting a kickback at some point.

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Didn't notice if it was posted; some of the details:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/steve-bannon-we-build-the-wall-indicted-1046931/?fbclid=IwAR3Wsja7cbPkmpmjQkN229X9XCjoaDzibiL3NJNQDXv3mHe31lfhhzvzVcU

 

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Kolfage, who started the crowdfunding campaign, repeatedly told supporters he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation.” Instead, the indictment alleges, Kolfage used the money raised to pay for home renovations, a boat, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, jewelry, plastic surgery, taxes, and credit card debt.

Yeah.  We know.

(picture of Ms. Kolfage, date unknown)

ashleyk_hawaii_106277641_281471336270023

 

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Bannon, who publicly described We Build the Wall as a “volunteer organization,” and the two other members of the alleged scheme used the money funneled from We Build the Wall to bankroll an array of unrelated personal expenses, including “travel, hotels, consumer goods, and personal credit card debts,” the indictment states.

Quote

The indictment says Bannon, Kolfage, and the two others concealed their alleged scam by routing their payments through a nonprofit group and a “shell company.” The Justice Department also alleges that Bannon and his associates used “fake invoices and sham ‘vendor’ agreements” to make sure that the scheme to pay Kolfage, the head of We Build the Wall, remained “confidential” and on a “need to know” basis, according to a text message sent by Kolfage and cited in the indictment.

 

Quote

In October 2019, the indictment adds, Bannon, Kolfage, Badolato, and Shea allegedly learned from a “financial institution” that they might be under federal investigation. According to the indictment, they took “additional steps to conceal the fraudulent scheme” at that time. They began using encrypted messaging applications, and We Build the Wall’s website “was changed to remove any mention of the promise that Kolfage was not being compensated and to add a statement that he would be paid a salary starting in January 2020.”

 

 

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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1 hour ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

 

And Bannon's last words were, "Take Me On!"  

They said it'd be a mailman I know...and you're a Mailman I know! 

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Agreed.  Preet Bharara was just on CNN talking about how Bannon wouldn't be considered a flight risk because he has ties to the U.S. and reason to clear his name.  I was like, "He also has a private plane and money for enough plastic surgery to disappear to a tropical paradise instead of facing 40 years in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.
If he has enough money for plastic surgery, why does he still look like that?
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27 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Bannon is an international right-wing promoter. That's partly what made his involvement in an America First dog whistle campaign so ludicrous. 

Correct, but he didn't fare all that well in the EU last year, and his influence has continued to dwindle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/world/europe/steve-bannon-european-elections-paris.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/10/why-doesnt-steve-bannon-matter-in-europe/599917/

Edited by SizzleChest
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21 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:


I love when the rats eat their own. I wonder how many are looking down their noses as Bannon while the bell tolls for...?

This is awesome of course but what are the odds Bannon gets immunity by flipping on the Chinese dude rather than trump?

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