We Build the Wall

I suppose I ought to say something profound. Perhaps I should claim this- “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Yeah, yeah, P.T. Barnum, fellow Nutmegger. The attribution is merely apocryphal and the copyright has expired anyway.

Steve Bannon charged with defrauding donors in private effort to raise money for Trump’s border wall
By Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, and Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post
August 20, 2020

Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed criminal charges Thursday against Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and three other men they alleged defrauded donors to a massive crowdfunding campaign that claimed to be raising money for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a news release, prosecutors said Bannon and another organizer, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, lied when they claimed they would not take any compensation as part of the campaign, called “We Build the Wall.” Bannon, prosecutors alleged, received more than $1 million through a nonprofit entity he controlled, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage while keeping a “substantial portion” for himself.

The campaign, publicly supported by several of the president’s allies, raised more than $25 million through hundreds of thousands of donors, the news release states.

Prosecutors alleged that Bannon and Kolfage along with two others — Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea — routed payments from the crowdfunding campaign through the nonprofit and another shell company, disguising them with fake invoices to help keep their personal pay secret.

All four were arrested Thursday and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. They were expected to make court appearances later in the day.

Bannon, a law enforcement official said, was taken into custody off the coast of Westbrook, Conn., while aboard a 150-foot yacht owned by a friend, Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui — who is wanted by authorities in Beijing on charges of fraud, blackmail and bribery. This official, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an active investigation.

Another law enforcement official said that Attorney General William P. Barr was briefed about the matter in advance.
…
Asked about the matter Thursday, Trump said he felt “very badly” but asserted of Bannon, “I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time.” Trump said he felt the private fundraising effort was “something I very much thought was inappropriate to be doing.”

“I don’t like that project,” the president said. “I thought it was being done for showboating reasons.”

Oh, did I mention it’s a piece of junk?

A Privately Funded Border Wall Was Already at Risk of Collapsing if Not Fixed. Hurricane Hanna Made It Worse.
by Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica
July 29, 2020

Intense rain over the weekend from Hurricane Hanna left gaping holes and waist-deep cracks on the banks of the Rio Grande that threaten the long-term stability of a privately funded border fence that is already the focus of lawsuits over its proximity to the river in South Texas.

The damage comes at the start of what is projected to be an active hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30.

Engineering experts who reviewed photos of the jagged cracks caused by the weekend’s storms said the damage reinforces what many have long said: Building and maintaining a border fence so close to the river poses serious challenges.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune previously reported that just months after completion, the private fence built by Fisher Industries, a North Dakota-based company, was showing signs of erosion that threatened its stability and could cause it to topple into the river if not fixed.

“It’s going to be a never-ending battle. You are always going to be fighting erosion when you are that close to the river,” said Adriana E. Martinez, a professor and geomorphologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville who has studied the impact of the border barriers in South Texas.

The 3-mile stretch of bollards along the river south of Mission, Texas, was a showcase project by Fisher Industries’ CEO Tommy Fisher, who put up more than $40 million of his own money to prove to the Trump administration that the private industry could do what the government hadn’t been able to: build the border wall right along the river.

Fisher, who subsequently secured $1.7 billion in federal contracts to build segments of the border fence, says that kind of erosion is to be expected given the amount of rainfall and the fact that the grass it added has not grown in that area by the fence.
…
But even before Hanna, photos revealed large gashes at various points along the structure where rainwater runoff had scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation, which experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shouldn’t be happening.

Those spots only worsened after Hanna pounded Mission with about 15 inches of rain. Photos taken after the hurricane show a series of gullies and rills along a section of the fence that extend like deep veins toward the river. In some areas, there are holes more than 10 feet wide that expose the footing.

“The damage to the soil underneath the fence after Hanna is far worse than what we saw from the photos from the big rain events from a month or so ago,” said Alex Mayer, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has done research in the Rio Grande basin.

With two or three more storms like Hanna, he added, the holes could expand to the point where the soil underneath, without support, would collapse.

Flooding and erosion concerns are some of the main reasons why the government has not built a border fence directly on the banks of the river.

And Butterflies. Yes, really. Back to WaPo.

“I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads. It was only done to make me look bad, and perhaps it now doesn’t even work.”

“President Trump has always felt the Wall must be a government project and that it is far too big and complex to be handled privately,” McEnany said in a statement. During the last presidential campaign, Trump vowed that Mexico — not U.S. taxpayers — would fund the border wall.

Those involved in the project had close ties to the administration, and campaign memorabilia was often pictured on the privately built section of the border wall.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. was a guest at a symposium hosted by the We Build the Wall group in New Mexico in 2019, praising the organization as “private enterprise at its finest.”

“Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else,” he added.

One of the group’s advisers, Kris Kobach, is the former Kansas secretary of state known for his hard-line views of immigration and close ties to the Trump administration. Earlier this month, Kobach was defeated in a Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Kansas.
…
“I talked with the president, and the We Build the Wall effort came up,” Kobach said. “The president said, ‘The project has my blessing, and you can tell the media that.’ ”

Other board members included Erik Prince, a conservative activist and defense contractor close to Bannon, as well as former congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.).

In a statement, an attorney for Prince said he joined the group’s advisory board because he was a believer in its mission to build a wall on the southern border. “He had nothing to do with the conduct alleged in today’s indictment, was never contacted in connection with any investigation, and doesn’t know anything about it,” attorney Matthew L. Schwartz said.

Oh, you were expecting originality? Trump Foundation, Trump University (at least with the Vodka and Steaks you got Vodka and Steaks even if they weren’t very good). This is the Right Wing Noise Machine Scam.

At least Lefties are genuinely deluded and not grifting con artists. Well, not some of them.