[Chicks]

The Stunning Predictability of Steve Bannon’s “We Build the Wall” Scam

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...-the-wall-scam

According to the government, the group raised more than twenty-five million dollars, and promised “not to take a penny in salary or compensation.” Then they pocketed a bunch of the money. Bannon allegedly routed more than a million dollars through a nonprofit he controls. One of his co-defendants, Brian Kolfage, allegedly used his share of the money to buy, among other things, a boat called Warfighter. According to the Times’ Evan Hill, Kolfage sailed Warfighter in a pro-Trump boat parade held in Destin, Florida, on July 4th. Happy birthday, America. Is there a word in German for something that is at once extraordinary and shocking and yet at the same time totally predictable and stupid?

The indictment raises questions about other Trump allies as well. We Build the Wall’s board members included Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state; Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder and a brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; David A. Clarke, Jr., the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; and Curt Schilling, the former major-league-baseball pitcher. The indictment came out of the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In June, Trump and his Attorney General, Bill Barr, forced Geoffrey Berman out of his job as the U.S. Attorney in that office, for reasons that remain unclear, and despite Berman’s protests. It now needs to be asked whether this case against a close Trump associate played a role in Berman’s ouster.