‘We Build the Wall’ co-founder Kolfage indicted in new tax case

Brian Kolfage, whose work with Stephen Bannon to raise money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall resulted in a federal fraud indictment last year, faces a new tax case.

Kolfage, a disabled Air Force veteran, was indicted this week for filing a false tax return and fraud by a federal grand jury in Pensacola, Florida, according to court records. In August, a New York grand jury accused Kolfage, Bannon and two others with defrauding investors in “We Build the Wall,” a private campaign that raised $25 million to support former President Donald Trump’s 2016 pledge to build a border barrier.

Bannon, a former White House strategist, was pardoned by Trump on his last day in office in January, but the New York case against Kolfage and the other two defendants is ongoing. Since then, Letitia James, New York’s top law enforcement officer, has been working with Manhattan prosecutors to investigate whether Bannon defrauded contributors for “We Build the Wall,” according to a person familiar with the matter.

Bannon is not charged in the new tax case, which was unsealed Thursday.

In the new indictment, Kolfage, of Miramar Beach, Florida, is accused of filing a 2019 tax return that listed his total income as $63,574, when he knew the true amount was “materially in excess of that amount.” Prosecutors said in the fraud count that he failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars he received from “We Build The Wall.”

Kolfage’s attorney, Harvey A. Steinberg, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Kolfage was the founder and public face of the wall-fundraising campaign. He and the others said he would accept no money from the project, yet he secretly took more than $350,000 to fund a lavish lifestyle, and Bannon took hundreds of thousands of dollars for his personal expenses, prosecutors said in the New York case. Kolfage has denied wrongdoing.

The defendants began devising ways to launder funds for their own use soon after launching the charity, prosecutors in New York said. They allegedly made outsized payments to contractors who kicked some of the money back to them and round-tripped some of the funds through a shell company. The effort resulted in about 5 miles (8 kilometers) of border fencing in two different locations in Texas and New Mexico.