Thursday, August 20, 2020
U.S: #SteveBannonArrested #SteveBannon - Steve Bannon Is Charged With Fraud in We Build the Wall Campaign
Mr. Bannon and three others are accused in a scheme to use funds raised for construction to pay for personal expenses. Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser and an architect of his 2016 general election campaign, was charged on Thursday with defrauding donors to a private fund-raising effort called We Build the Wall, which was intended to bolster one of the president’s signature initiatives: erecting a barrier on the Mexican border.By Alan Feuer, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman
With a wounded Air Force veteran and a Florida venture capitalist, Mr. Bannon conspired to cheat hundreds of thousands of donors by falsely promising that their money had been set aside exclusively toward building a new section of border wall, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan. Prosecutors said that after siphoning money from the project, Mr. Bannon plowed nearly $1 million into paying off his personal expenses.
Mr. Bannon was arrested early Thursday on a $35 million, 150-foot yacht that was off the coast of Westbrook, Conn., law enforcement officials said. Working with the Coast Guard, federal postal inspectors and special agents from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan boarded the vessel, which belonged to the exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, the officials said.
The charges, filed days before Mr. Trump was to be nominated for a second term at the Republican National Convention, marked a stark turn of fortune for Mr. Bannon, a high-living and flamboyant political strategist. He had first burst into the public eye when he was in charge of the right-wing media outlet Breitbart, where he had aligned himself with the alt-right, a loose network of groups and people who promote white identity.Now in custody in New York, Mr. Bannon joins a growing list of Trump associates who have been charged with federal crimes, including Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer.
Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said Mr. Bannon and his three co-defendants defrauded donors to We Build the Wall by “capitalizing on their interest” in the border wall and falsely telling them that “all of that money would be spent on construction.”
The 24-page indictment, unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was by far the most politically sensitive case that Ms. Strauss has handled since she assumed her job after her predecessor, Geoffrey S. Berman, was fired in June by Mr. Trump.Mr. Bannon was expected to appear before a federal magistrate judge in New York on Thursday afternoon. Investigators from Ms. Strauss’s office and postal inspectors conducted several searches around the country on Thursday morning, at the homes of the defendants and at other locations, law enforcement officials said.Shortly after the charges were announced, Mr. Trump sought to distance himself from Mr. Bannon and the fund-raising initiative, though the president also expressed sympathy for his former chief adviser.
“I feel very badly,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time.”
The president said he knew nothing about the multimillion-dollar campaign but quickly contradicted himself, saying he disliked it.
“I don’t like that project,” Mr. Trump said. “I thought it was being done for showboating reasons.” He called paying for the border wall privately “inappropriate.”
A White House official said Mr. Trump did not know ahead of time that Mr. Bannon was being arrested, and he was told by aides after it happened. One of Mr. Trump’s sons, Donald Jr., publicly promoted the We Build the Wall effort at an event in 2018, calling it “private enterprise at its finest.”
Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement on Thursday that he had no involvement with the effort beyond praising it at that one event.
According to the authorities, Mr. Bannon hatched the plot to defraud the donors with three other men: Brian Kolfage, a 38-year-old Air Force veteran and triple amputee from Miramar Beach, Fla.; Andrew Badolato, 56, a venture capitalist from Sarasota, Fla.; and Timothy Shea, 49, of Castle Rock, Colo. Mr. Kolfage and Mr. Badolato were arrested in Florida on Thursday, and Mr. Shea was arrested in Denver.
Mr. Kolfage, who lost both his legs and one of his arms during his service in Iraq, created We Build the Wall as a GoFundMe page in December 2018. It was an immediate success, raising nearly $17 million in its first week online, prosecutors said. To persuade donors to contribute to the effort, prosecutors said, Mr. Kolfage promised them that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” and that all of the money he raised would be used “in the execution of our mission and purpose.” According to the indictment, Mr. Bannon described We Build the Wall as a “volunteer organization.”
But all of that was false, prosecutors said. Instead, they claimed, Mr. Kolfage secretly took more than $350,000 in donations and spent it on home renovations, boat payments, a luxury S.U.V., a golf cart, jewelry and cosmetic surgery.
Mr. Bannon, working through an unnamed nonprofit organization, received more than $1 million from We Build the Wall, prosecutors said, some of which he used to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses.
Court papers suggested that prosecutors were in possession of several text messages between the men, including one in which Mr. Kolfage told Mr. Badolato that the payment scheme was “confidential” and should be kept on a “need to know” basis.
It remained unclear precisely when the yearlong investigation into the scheme began. But last year, a bank informed Mr. Bannon that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records related to We Build the Wall, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Prosecutors said that despite the effort’s early success, there were questions almost instantly “about Mr. Kolfage’s background” and the viability of his promises to give the money he had raised to the government to actually build Mr. Trump’s wall.
Because of these concerns, prosecutors said, GoFundMe warned Mr. Kolfage that if he did not find a “legitimate nonprofit organization” to handle the money, it would return it to the donors. Mr. Kolfage claimed that the group had determined that only $800,000 of the funds needed to be given back.
“No rules were broken,” Mr. Kolfage said in an interview last year. “Ninety-four percent of the donors we have been able to reach are opting in. We’ve reached 75 percent of all the donors so far.”
But some donors wondered what had happened to their money. Harvey Garlotte of Hattiesburg, Miss., donated $60 to the fund and was among those who complained when he received a refund — minus the $3 he had added as a tip for the group. In a complaint to the Florida secretary of state filed last year, Mr. Garlotte wrote that he felt he had been cheated by We Build the Wall, noting that even though Mr. Kolfage lived in Florida, he could find no record of a Florida charity registration.
“From my side of the road, Mr. Kolfage was simply using a hot button topic, a very emotional topic, and his status as a wounded veteran, for selfish and self-serving reasons and personal financial gain,” Mr. Garlotte wrote in his complaint. As the problems with donors mounted, Mr. Kolfage said that he would establish a board of advisers for the group and incorporate it as We Build the Wall Inc. Mr. Kolfage enlisted Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, to serve on the board. Mr. Kobach, a longtime Trump supporter and a prominent immigration hard-liner, was not named in the indictment. Mr. Kolfage also brought in Mr. Bannon, who had joined Mr. Trump’s campaign as chief executive officer in August 2016 and became the White House’s chief strategist after Mr. Trump was elected.
Prosecutors said Mr. Bannon was by then already working with Mr. Badolato on a separate project: a nonprofit group dedicated to “promoting economic nationalism and American sovereignty.”
And within days of becoming involved with the wall-building effort, the two men took “significant control” of its day-to-day activities, prosecutors said, including its “finances, messaging, donor outreach and general operations.” In January 2019, prosecutors said, the group announced that it was changing its mission and would seek to build a wall privately. The group told its donors that they would have to “opt in” to the altered plan, prosecutors said.
Several times, prosecutors said, Mr. Kolfage falsely assured his donors that every dime they gave him would go to the wall.
“It’s not possible to steal the money,” he said at one point, according to the indictment. “We have an advisory committee. I can’t touch that money. It’s not for me.”
But prosecutors contended that Mr. Bannon and Mr. Badolato started making secret payments to Mr. Kolfage in February 2019 through Mr. Bannon’s nonprofit group.
Some of the payments, prosecutors said, were made to Mr. Kolfage’s wife and were disguised on tax forms as “media” expenses.
Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expresses deep grief and sorrow over the death Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo
In a condolence message, the PPP Chairman said that Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo remained in the forefront in the struggle for supremacy of the Constitution and strengthening of democracy adding that he was a strong voice against injustices to Balochistan and his sacrifices would be remembered by the political and democratic workers like his father Mir Ghous Bux Bizenjo.
PPP Chairman eulogized the services of late Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo for upholding the Constitution, restoration, and strengthening of democracy and respect and protection for human rights. He said the death of Mir Hasil Bizenjo is not only the loss of Balochistan but for the entire Pakistan.
https://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/
Pakistan’s enemy number one is Israel now. India can wait
NAILA INAYAT
Now that Israel and UAE have reached a deal, Pakistan is in a quandary again. Will friendship with it help it check India or will it betray Palestine?
Prompted by last week’s historic deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalise relations, it is that time of the year again when a discussion in Pakistan begins, rather discretely: Do we accept Israel, or not? And like all the other times, this too shall pass, or not.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has stated that no matter what other countries do, Pakistan will never recognise Israel until “Palestinians are given their right of a just settlement”. If Pakistan accepts Israel, it will have to give up Kashmir as well, because the same situation applies there. Khan’s statement came after a carefully drafted response from the Pakistan Foreign Office that the UAE-Israel deal “is a development with far-reaching implications”. Neither condemning nor commending, staying clear of creating troubles for itself with the Gulf state, while still recovering from the diplomatic fiasco with Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan, for decades, has ideologically aligned itself with the Gulf and the Arab world. So, will their warming up to Israel now make Pakistan reconsider its politics?
The star of conspiracy
After Partition, Pakistan solemnly opposed the idea of ties with Israel, despite it being the only other ideological state in the world apart from Pakistan.
For a state that Pakistan refuses to recognise, we certainly worry about Israel a bit much, and also think that it worries about us. But of course, Pakistan is the centre of the universe, and every country out there is conspiring against us. That’s why most ‘traitors’ and ‘agents’ are coloured Yahoodi (Jew) and all ‘lobbies’ working against Pakistan are Jewish. A close second winner is the Hanood (Hindu) with their R&AW agents.
Those who advocate acceptance of Israel by Pakistan often point to India and Israel’s friendly relations. To keep India’s ‘nefarious‘ designs in check and to counter it, this could be a good way forward. Such is the paranoia that half of Pakistan still believes that our country arrested an Israeli pilot on the day Abhinandan Varthaman fell in Pakistan. While the other half believes that Israeli pilots led the Indian airstrike on Balakot. One can always blame India for using Israeli bombs in Balakot, hence the confusion.
This just goes to show anything and everything Israeli is a ‘Zionist’ conspiracy. Naya Pakistan has witnessed a couple of them. A member of parliament from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) suggested ties with Israel, urging Muslims and Jews to come to a peaceful settlement. This rang alarm bells that the PTI is working on a “Jewish agenda”. Then there was the curious case of an Israeli plane landing in Rawalpindi in 2018, while Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was on a visit to Oman, but the Pakistan government continued to deny it. Then Pakistan’s Immigration and Passports Office listed Israel among countries whose citizens were allowed to visit Pakistan, but later clarified it was a mistake.
The passport of Pakistan says: “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.” So, if Jewish or Christian Pakistanis want to go for a pilgrimage to Israel, what should they do? Perhaps, Navjot Singh Sidhu can help find a way to lead them to Jerusalem given his magical hug with army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa opened up the Kartarpur corridor. Or else, they could get arrested like David Ariel, a Pakistani citizen who protested in Islamabad saying he wanted to travel to Israel on his Pakistani passport.
Who cares what Pakistanis think
The first leader to openly challenge the status quo was military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf, who said that if the Palestinians and Israelis reach a peace deal, then why should Pakistan not recognise the country? In 2005, in Ankara, the foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan held the first-ever officially acknowledged meeting, which was met with much condemnation by religious groups back home. Understandably so, because the anti-Israel sentiment has been good for rabble-rousing.
The notion that public sentiment is against any association with Israel is as accurate as the notion that Pakistanis’ emotions don’t matter when their vote is stolen. But to think that the common Pakistani has a say in foreign policy is laughable. If the winds have to change, they will change, and the jazbaat of the people will be the last thing anyone would worry about.
Before recognising Israel, it will be good for Pakistan to recognise itself. And decide what it actually wants as a State. Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that international relations are above religious sentiments — a thought hardly adhered to by anyone in Pakistan. For now, Israel is Pakistan’s enemy number one until Palestine is freed. This gives us a break from India for a while.
India asks international community to isolate Pakistan
India on Thursday gave a befitting reply to Pakistan at the 5th World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, and asked the international community to isolate Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism.
The Indian Parliament, led by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, exercised its Right of Reply to underline that “Pakistan PM admitted there are nearly 40,000 militants on its soil. Pakistan’s aggressions against J-K in 1965, 1971, 1999 (Kargil), attack on Mumbai and Parliament, Uri, Pulwama etc. show Pakistan’s state-sponsored policy of terrorism as evident in the inaction against the likes of Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and Ehsanullah Ehsan.”
The Indian authorities also said that “Jammu & Kashmir has been and will remain an integral part of India. We call upon Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism. Our overtures should not be taken as a sign of weakness.”
India’s strong reply comes amid Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s continued attempts to call an OIC meeting on Kashmir despite being snubbed by the Saudi kingdom. Khan is also believed to be aligning with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to form a new Islamic axis against India.
At the conference, organized jointly by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Geneva, and the Parliament of Austria with the support of the United Nations (UN), India’s reply came during the special event on ‘Countering Terrorism and violent Extremism: The perspective of victims’ today. The reply reads:
“India exercises its Right of Reply to a statement by Pakistan, a country whose PM glorified dreaded terrorist “Osama Bin Laden” as a ‘martyr’ from its Parliament,” said the Indian response.
Indian Parliament also highlighted that the UN Analytical Support Sanctions Monitoring Team mentions Pakistan as the leading exporter of terror with more than 6,000 nationals currently engaged in terrorism.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/cwc-to-meet-soon-as-clamour-for-rahul-gandhi-s-return-as-party-chief-grows/story-RydJDfEl3MqCHUsSfsarCN.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)