How Steve Bannon's arrest links to a dozen points of blight for Donald Trump
Former Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon in 2018. Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
No matter how the White House might seek separation from Steve Bannon, he played a leading role in President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Some pundits even took him seriously when the former Goldman Sachs associate peddled "populism" and "nationalism" and compared his client, Trump, to Andrew Jackson.
Now Bannon's arrest on fraud charges belongs to a constellation of twists and farces that have bedeviled Trumpworld that may have better fit the scandal-stained administration of President Warren G. Harding in the 1920s.
The first special twist is the location of Bannon's arrest Thursday — a $35 million yacht owned by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. Guo was accused of corruption and other misdeeds by Chinese authorities and fled to the United States in late 2014. Bannon calls him a political activist.
Bannon and co-defendants allegedly misused a nonprofit called We Build the Wall. Overall, Trump's signature proposal to wall off the entire southern U.S. border looks like the very fiasco that bipartisan skeptics warned against. Depending on the year, Trump has said the funds would come from the military, or Congress or Mexico — but not his supporters.
The 2016 campaign team that once led shouts about draining the swamp of corruption seems instead to have expanded it. So far, operatives Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort are among those who got themselves convicted.
The timing and context of the Bannon bust, 74 days before Trump faces reelection, are extraordinary. This week, it was revealed that the GOP-run Senate Intelligence Committee last year made criminal referrals of Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Erik Prince and Sam Clovis to federal prosecutors. Members suspected they deliberately misled the committee during its Russiagate investigation. As it happens, Prince is listed as a member of We Build the Wall's advisory board on its website.
Of all agencies, federal officials bringing the mail-fraud case happened to come from the U.S. Postal Service, which Trump has a habit of degrading and where a Trump-allied donor is in charge.
Of all locales, the arrest comes on a boat. Trump keeps hyping boat parades to show his support. Seized in the federal operation was another boat, a "2019 Jupiter Marine boat named Warfighter," according to the U.S. Justice Department. Bannon co-defendant Brian Kolfage allegedly misused Build the Wall funds to buy the vessel, which he reportedly sailed in a July 4 pro-Trump boat parade.
Of all prosecutors, this case lands with the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, currently headed by Audrey Strauss. In June, Trump and Attorney General William Barr mysteriously fired her predecessor Geoffrey Berman, who handled cases that are politically sensitive for Trump.
Trump said he never really liked the private fundraising drive for the wall. But nonprofits might be a sore point for Trump in their own right. Officials have shut down his family's charitable foundation.
Scams also have been part of the Trumpworld scenery. Alleged rip-offs by the defunct Trump University were settled for $25 million.
The presence of Bannon himself in a putatively pro-Trump fundraising drive for the wall follows his other private-sector involvements on the president's behalf. He no longer heads Breitbart News or works with the billionaire Mercer family, but Bannon appeared last Sunday on television, delivering talking points for the Trump campaign about the Democrats.
Despite any appearances to the contrary, Trump press spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday that the president "has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the Administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project." That fits Trump's habit of reflexively distancing himself from associates and ex-associates in trouble.
But Kris Kobach, the Kansas Republican who headed Trump's short-lived "voter fraud" commission, is listed as a key adviser to We Build the Wall. Donald Trump Jr. appeared at a symposium hosted by the We Build the Wall group in New Mexico in 2019, praising the nonprofit as “private enterprise at its finest,” The Washington Post reported. Other board members included former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and former major league pitcher Curt Schilling, a vocal Trump backer.
As a result, many cracks already exist in the figurative wall the president would like us to see between this scandal-rocked enterprise and Trump’s inner circle.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
