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Steve Bannon's "WeBuildTheWall" loses court battle to unfreeze fraudulent funds

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 01:34:11 No.860281 View View Reply Original Report

https://www.courthousenews.com/crowdfunders-of-border-wall-lose-ground-at-2nd-circuit/

A right-wing activist fighting to unfreeze funds collected by the scandal-tinged nonprofit We Build the Wall to crowdfund a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border made little headway in that effort Tuesday at the Second Circuit.

We Build the Wall was spearheaded by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage and Steve Bannon, the erstwhile chief White House strategist to former President Donald Trump. Along with two associates, Kolfage and Bannon were indicted last August on charges that they siphoned money from the organization for their personal use.

With the government asserting that every dime the group are the proceeds of fraud, We Build the Wall’s general counsel Kris Kobach made the quixotic request to unfreeze its assets. Defeat is hardly a new sensation for Kobach, whose bid to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate sank in last year’s Republican primaries. As the twice-elected Kansas secretary of state, Kobach’s losing defense of voter ID laws would earn him court sanctions but also a stint as vice chair of President Donald Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity. The group meant to bolster Trump’s first-term claims of rampant voter fraud disbanded without issuing a single report.

At the hearing Tuesday on We Build the Wall, Kobach’s claims found a skeptical audience in U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, sitting on the three-judge appeals panel by designation.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 01:34:37 No.860282 Report

Quoted By:

“If the boss of an organized crime family formed an LLC and had all his capos pay money into the LLC instead of giving it to him in cash, can’t the government reach the LLC?” the judge asked.

Justin Weddle, representing We Build the Wall and Kobach, said the nonprofit had an existence apart from its allegedly crooked managers.

But Kolfage “is the crime boss!” Kaplan exclaimed.

We Build the Wall raised some $25 million in private donations but only succeeded in building 3 miles of Trump’s long-promised border fence. Prosecutors say the donations came, at least in part, to advertising that the group was staffed by volunteers and that every dollar raised would go toward building the wall. Meanwhile, according to the indictment, Kolfage and Bannon took more than $1 million to pay for cosmetic surgery, a Range Rover, a boat, a golf cart, jewelry, home renovations and more.

“While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle,” the acting U.S. attorney had said last year.

All four defendants have pleaded not guilty. Bannon, who was arrested off the coast of Connecticut on a 150-foot yacht owned by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, was pardoned on Trump’s last night in office, leading the court to dismiss his federal indictment only last week. Amid reports that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is investigating Bannon for claims under state law, the case against Kolfage and his associates is ongoing.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 01:35:38 No.860284 Report

Quoted By:

After the indictments were handed down, the Justice Department froze three of the organization’s bank accounts containing $1.4 million, claiming they were subject to forfeiture. That led to a challenge by Kobach, who came to national prominence both for his attempts to impose strict voter-identification rules and for his hardline anti-immigration views. As late as 2016 Kobach was still raising questions about President Obama’s citizenship that were long debunked as baseless.

Kobach is appealing the December ruling that said We Build the Wall has no right to contest a forfeiture before it occurs. If Kolfage and his associates are convicted and the government moves to take the money, the judge wrote, it can contest the forfeiture then.

Framing this as a due process violation, Kobach says the government has tied up the organization’s assets indefinitely without giving it any ability to vindicate its rights. His brief calls the government’s freeze order “a nuclear weapon” that “is contrary to the plain terms of the applicable statutes, applicable case law, the Constitution, and common sense.”

At oral argument, U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman told the judges that there was really no difference between We Build the Wall and its indicted managers. “Kolfage was founder, president, and CEO,” he emphasized. “He was able to steal money without anyone stepping in his way.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier, an Obama appointee, said he understood the claim that Kolfage was “Oz behind the curtain” but questioned whether We Build the Wall might still be an innocent third party. Sobelman said no because “the fraud was lying to the hundreds of thousands of donors saying the founders would get no compensation. So every dollar that came in, whether to build a wall of buy a boat, was fraudulently obtained.”

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 01:36:39 No.860286 Report

Quoted By:

Kobach is appealing the December ruling that said We Build the Wall has no right to contest a forfeiture before it occurs. If Kolfage and his associates are convicted and the government moves to take the money, the judge wrote, it can contest the forfeiture then.

Framing this as a due process violation, Kobach says the government has tied up the organization’s assets indefinitely without giving it any ability to vindicate its rights. His brief calls the government’s freeze order “a nuclear weapon” that “is contrary to the plain terms of the applicable statutes, applicable case law, the Constitution, and common sense.”

At oral argument, U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman told the judges that there was really no difference between We Build the Wall and its indicted managers. “Kolfage was founder, president, and CEO,” he emphasized. “He was able to steal money without anyone stepping in his way.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier, an Obama appointee, said he understood the claim that Kolfage was “Oz behind the curtain” but questioned whether We Build the Wall might still be an innocent third party. Sobelman said no because “the fraud was lying to the hundreds of thousands of donors saying the founders would get no compensation. So every dollar that came in, whether to build a wall of buy a boat, was fraudulently obtained.”

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 01:37:40 No.860288 Report

Quoted By:

Weddle noted that We Build the Wall stopped claiming in January 2020 that its founders weren’t getting paid, and 95% of the frozen funds came in after that date.

Pooler wanted to know if it violated due process to make We Build the Wall wait until after the criminal trial to try to get its accounts unfrozen. Weddle replied that the freeze amounted to “zero due process.”

But Sobelman argued that the trial was scheduled for November and that wasn’t an unreasonable amount of time to make the organization wait. He also noted that the District Court had found probable cause to believe that the assets were forfeitable.

Kaplan, also a Clinton appointee, suggested that deciding the issue now was impractical. There would have to be “a fairly massive proceeding to sort out which money is subject to seizure and which isn’t and that could swallow the criminal case,” he said. “So why is this appealable at all since there’s a postconviction remedy?”

As for Trump, the former president distanced himself from We Build the Wall weeks before the indictments when it was reported that the 3-mile section built by the organization was at risk of collapse due to erosion.

“I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads,” Trump wrote. “Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles.”

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 03:00:13 No.860368 Report

Quoted By:

>>860281
Meanwhile, rednecks don't care about this (probably a psyop but it could be done):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl_at6wV2_w

themirror seesitsself

themirror seesitsself Wed 02 Jun 2021 11:25:16 No.860526 Report

Quoted By: >>860571

>>860281
The fake populist grifters bleed my stupid fellow humans.
Should I turn a blind eye.
or should I get in on the grift?
What is the American way?

I turn to the Tao,
and rise above it all
and like shit, my bliss
on you shall fall.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 02 Jun 2021 12:52:35 No.860571 Report

Quoted By:

>>860526
Imagine you are very thirsty and there is an open water spigot in front of you that you can't turn off. Do you let the water go to waste by spilling all over the ground? Or do you briefly put your hat under the spigot to collect some water to drink?

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