August 25, 2020
==The Story Behind Bannon's Arrest
By Grant Baker==
On August 20th, President Trump’s former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was arrested on fraud charges relating to the “We Build the Wall” construction project on the U.S.-Mexico border. The news made for splashy headlines, but story behind the charges was more mundane. Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee veteran and Purple Heart recipient.
• The crowdfunding website relinquished the funds to a nonprofit set up by Bannon as Kolfage continued to promote the project, raising additional funds while promising to spend 100% of funds on the wall’s construction and not to pay a salary to the organizers. Indeed, the bylaws of the new 501(c)(4) “We Build the Wall” nonprofit reflect these statements. Under Bannon, “We Build the Wall” began paying various construction, marketing, and legal vendors for work relating to the project. One of these vendors owned by Bannon associate Timothy Shea began paying Kolfage for marketing work on the project. Kolfage could not get paid as an organizer but could as an employee of a vendor, receiving a total of $350,000 since 2018 for his work on the project.
• Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York disagreed, conducting a pre-dawn raid to arrest yet another Trump ally (though this time, without the CNN camera crew). Bannon was yanked off a yacht belonging to a wealthy Chinese dissident and charged along with Kolfage, Shea, and another associate.
• The issue of Kolfage’s salary aside, why the SDNY would allege that Bannon and his two wealthy associates ran a two-year scam to expense some hotel bills makes more sense than you think.The charges were filed by acting United States Attorney Audrey Strauss, a registered Democrat filling the shoes of her former boss Geoffrey Berman after he was fired from the position by President Trump. Berman was terminated after it came out that he had been using his position as a federal prosecutor to wage waragainst Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani in retaliation for Giuliani’s investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden’s Burisma scandal. Under the pretext of investigating a foreign lobbying disclosure violation, Berman had attempted to pressure Giuliani out of investigating how Joe Biden forced the Ukranian government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son. After initially refusing to vacate his post, Berman left the SDNY to his deputy Audrey Strauss.
• Audrey Strauss ‘s case history reads like a partisan hitman. Under Berman, Strauss worked on cases against Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, and Republican House Representative Chris Collins. Not long after her boss was pushed out, she rolled out the charges against Steve Bannon, making any future firing look like obstruction of justice. Strauss’s maneuver should sound familiar to anyone who remembers former FBI Director James Comey’s termination. Immediately after Comey was fired, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe became acting FBI Director and immediately launched a retaliatory investigation into Trump to protect his position.
• Using the McCabe maneuver, Strauss has caught President Trump in a double bind. If the Department of Justice is contemplating firing Audrey Strauss for conducting deeply political investigations under Geoffrey Berman, they’d better think twice. Although the charges against Bannon affirm her politicization of prosecutorial power, firing her now would look like obstruction of justice. If they leave her alone, she will likely find excuses to charge additional Trump associates, throwing red meat to her party in the final months of an important election year and distracting the public from important indictments relating to the illegally conceived anti-Trump FISA spy warrants.
In pursuing this case, Strauss will gain access to the list of donors who contributed to “We Build the Wall”, opening the door to political persecution of noteworthy individuals on the list and causing a chilling effect on grassroots political activism. Strauss’s indictment also includes a forfeiture request regarding the remaining “We Build the Wall” funds, which the court will claim an estimated 10% administrative handling fee even if an acquittal occurs later down the road and ending the project in the meantime
• It may be awhile before the political headwinds shaping the charges against Steve Bannon are recognized by the media, but if the unravelling of the Russian investigation serves as any indicator, the answer is most likely never.
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/the_story_behind_bannons_arrest.html#ixzz6WEPfiYCo