A little justice would do our hearts good

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The best people

Is there now, or has there ever been, a Trump campaign official who wasn't doing something illegal?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

GOP: the party of grifters

So THAT's what Berman was so exercised about.  Kudos to Berman and Strauss.

Steve Bannon.  Who would have imagined?

2/ The crowdraising campaign raised more than $25 million, and pledged that the founder would "not take a penny in salary or compensation" and that "100% of the fund raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose." Lying to get someone's money is fraud.

3/ The indictment alleges that Bannon received over $1 million from the campaign, which he used to secretly pay the founder and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in his own expenses.

If this sounds like a very simple case to get your head around, that's because it is. 

4/ There are some twists and turns in this story. The crowdfunding website suspended the "We The People Build The Wall" campaign, which pledged to give all of the money to the federal government to build the wall, early on. 

5/ The website said they would return the funds unless the founder identified a non-profit to which the funds could be transferred. Bannon used a separate 501(c)(4) non-profit group that he already controlled to receive the funds, with the new purpose of funding a private wall. 

6/ The indictment alleges that Bannon and his associates continued to lie, claiming that the founder would "take no salary" and would receive not "a penny of compensation from these donations." These alleged lies were repeated many times, according to the indictment. 

7/ Yet Bannon paid the founder hundreds of thousands of dollars in "salary" and did so in a manner meant to conceal the payments, by making payments to the founder's spouse. Bannon falsely reported on the 1099 tax form that the payments were for "media." 

8/ In sum, the indictment alleges that Bannon, the founder, and their other co-conspirators each received hundreds of thousands in donor funds from the effort.

If this case didn't involve Steve Bannon, or an effort to ripoff Trump's base, it would be a garden variety fraud. 

9/ Federal prosecutors routinely investigate and prosecute cases like this one.

It can be complicated to prove that otherwise legitimate companies or individuals engaged in fraudulent activity. This isn't one of those cases. The whole organization looks like a scam. 

Everything connected to Donald Trump is a scam.

10/ If the prosecutors can prove what is alleged in the indictment, it's hard to imagine a jury hesitating to convict the defendants. This case raises questions about Barr's recent attempt to fire and replace the SDNY U.S. Attorney, or whether Trump will pardon Bannon. /end

What will his current one be busted for?  (Reminder that the current one is recently replacing one that was siphoning hundreds of thousands to buy luxury automobiles and boats and in general have a fabulous lifestyle.)

Countdown to Trump saying he hardly knew Steve Bannon and never met the others.*

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Also, Bill Barr's "right-hand man" appointed to the DC justice office is going to probably have some extra headaches now, because his name happens to the same as one of the indicted crooks: Timothy Shea.

UPDATE:

*UPDATE:  And there it is...

He didn't know "those three people."

Lawless, like their leader

The construction of a private border wall partially funded by rightwing allies of Donald Trump continued with vigor in south Texas this week, seemingly in blatant violation of a court injunction ordering work to be suspended.

On Thursday and Friday, within three days of a temporary restraining order being issued, the Guardian found construction crews with at least 10 heavy machinery vehicles moving soil, digging trenches and positioning tall metal posts along the US bank of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo county, which forms the border with Mexico. A 3.5-mile, privately-funded [$25 million in donations] concrete barrier is planned on the site, near Mission, Texas.

The state court order was served to We Build the Wall (WBTW), an anti-migrant group founded by military veteran Brian Kolfage, and the landowners, Neuhaus and Sons LLC, whose land is situated between Trump’s proposed wall and the Mexican border.

WBTW is a not-for-profit group that has crowd-funded millions of dollars by tapping into anti-migrant fervor and is led by the former White House advisor Steve Bannon as chairman of its advisory board.

[...]

On Wednesday, Kolfage said that construction work continued as neither he, or the group, had been physically served with the order.

  Guardian

So, who was it served on?

An employee of the construction company Fisher Industries, who identified himself as Sean, confirmed that work had continued uninterrupted – despite the injunction.

“They [the construction workers] have told us they are not going to stop,” Sam Pena from the local sheriff’s office said on Thursday. The sheriff’s deputies filed reports documenting the ongoing construction work that appeared to be in violation of the court order.

And, on 5 December, the federal government launched separate legal action to stop the construction, on the grounds that it violated binational treaty obligations with Mexico. A temporary injunction was granted by the US district judge Randy Crane.

[...]

But, in a twist, judge Crane agreed to dismiss WBTW as a defendant after its lawyer and prominent conservative, Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, claimed the group mostly handled “social media cheerleading” for the project and was nothing more than a passive investor, providing only 5% of the funding.

“We don’t have any control over the project or the machinery or what’s going on,” Kobach said in court in the southern district of Texas.

[...]

“Where is the money?” said Javier Peña, a lawyer acting for the National Butterfly Center. “They use fear and anger to divide people and convince them to give money for a wall which they now say they are not funding. We Build the Wall is either misleading its donors, which is fraud, or lying to a federal judge.”

[...]

Thursday’s federal injunction prevents Neuhaus and Sons, the landowners, Fisher Industries and its parent company, Fisher Sand and Gravel, from excavating and clearing more land, or constructing any permanent structures until the IBWC determines whether it could cause flooding or redirect the water flow in violation of the 1970 binational treaty.

Well, obviously, it hasn't prevented them.

Earlier this week, Fisher Sand and Gravel was awarded a $400m Pentagon contract to build 31 miles of wall in Arizona – despite a history of environmental and tax violations

So if they get stymied with the private wall building, they'll still get government money.

The chair of the House committee on homeland security, Bennie Thompson, has called for an investigation to determine whether Trump unduly influenced the military’s decision to award the contract to Fisher.

[...]

The Trump administration has suspended 28 laws relating to clean water, public lands, endangered species and the rights of Native Americans in order to speed up construction of the border wall.

But such waivers only apply to the official government wall; rogue private projects must obey all laws and treaties.

Or not.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/12:  The Pentagon's IG is going to "review" this.

GoFundMe border wall update

A decorated veteran who raised more than $20 million to finance construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border has announced that he will instead use the money to finance a new nonprofit group that will build the wall itself—or at least a couple miles of it.

[...]

Now Kolfage, a prolific operator of conspiracy theory Facebook pages, has recruited a team of prominent figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to run a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit, named We Fund The Wall, to do some wall construction of its own. The new group’s board, Kolfage announced on Friday, includes Erik Prince, the founder of infamous military contract Blackwater; David Clarke, the former scandal-plagued sheriff of Milwaukee County; Fox News contributor Sara Carter; Tom Tancredo, an immigration hardliner and former Colorado congressman; and former Kansas Secretary of State and voter fraud crusader Kris Kobach

  Daily Beast

And their salaries will eat up how much of the money?

Kolfage’s fundraising campaign was initially designed to help finance that construction with private contributions. He insisted that he had been in contact with a number of federal officials and members of Congress devising ways to funnel the massive amounts of money raised on GoFundMe to the federal treasury.

It appears that that plan went awry.

It didn't go awry. It wasn't well researched in the first place, and it turns out you can't give money to the government for a specific project. If you give money to the government, it goes into the general fund and is spent according to Congressional budget appropriations.

“The federal government won’t be able to accept our donations anytime soon,” Kolfage said in an update on the GoFundMe page on Friday.

"Any time soon." Like, ever.

GoFundMe is emailing donors with an option to proactively agree to send their money to We Fund the Wall, but if donors decline or never respond to that option, they’ll receive a refund.

[...]

Dustin Stockton, a conservative activist and We Fund The Wall spokesman, said he expects that enough people will agree to redirect their GoFundMe contributions for the group to retain a sizable portion of the funds.

I, on the other hand, have a feeling that $20 million is going to drop dramatically.

“When the campaign was created, the campaign organizer specifically stated on the campaign page, ‘If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny,’” GoFundMe’s statement reads. “He also stated on the campaign page, ‘100% of your donations will go to the Trump Wall. If for ANY reason we don't reach our goal we will refund your donation.’ However, that did not happen.”

[...]

Rather than financing federal efforts to build the wall, We Build The Wall plans to go the route that its name suggests and finance construction on its own, according Stockton. He said the group to secure enough funding from its initial GoFundMe supporters to build “at least two miles” along the southern border, which is nearly 2,000 miles long.

LOL.

The group has already been in touch with landowners in Texas about buying or leasing their land for wall construction, Stockton said. It’s also retained two law firms to deal with regulatory issues that are sure to dog the project, including Barnes & Thornburg and Foley & Lardner. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney with the latter, who Stockton said is working with the new nonprofit, is a prominent conservative lawyer representing a host of political and nonprofit groups aligned with President Trump’s agenda.

Oh, Hell, there won't be ANY money left for construction.

We Build The Wall is also staffing up administratively, a hiring spree that Stockton said is being financed by private donors, not GoFundMe contributions. He declined to name any of the donors.

Imagine that.

We Build The Wall is convinced that private funding for wall construction, to the extent it can be marshalled, is preferable, given Washington’s inability to agree on a funding package. “We expect we’re going to be able to construct the wall so much more efficiently than the government,” Stockton said.

Well, two miles of it, anyway. And, hey, come to think of it, that IS more than the government is going to get done.

Keep up the good work, gang.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.