Two things prominent rightwing figures seem to share in common is they like the trappings of fancy lifestyles (e.g., yachts) and they pay for them by stealing from their supporters.
And as Mother Jones puts it (here), “The right-wing grift, long a staple of the US political scene, reached a kind of apotheosis under Donald Trump.”
So it was no real surprise last week when Brain Kolfage, founder of the group “We Build the Wall,” which raised over $25 million in private donations for a border wall that Trump promised voters Mexico would pay for, pleaded guilty to fraud and tax charges for siphoning off some of those funds for personal use, including purchasing a $600,000 boat (photo, left; additional details of the criminal investigation are here).
Mother Jones says the “most high-profile figure associated with the scheme,” Steve Bannon, who also skimmed money from the scheme, “won’t deal with legal consequences for the alleged crime” because Trump pardoned him, but that’s not entirely true. Bannon could still face state charges (details here).
“Even by the standards of right-wing griftery, We Build the Wall was bold stuff,” Mother Jones says. That it was; Kolfage and Bannon each pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors.
Some of the funds did go to border wall projects on private land, more or less (e.g., photo below). That is, private landowners hosted the projects, but they spilled over onto federal land, and also lacked required permits, resulting in conflicts with federal and local authorities (details here).
As for how effective the wall is, it looks to me like all you have to do is prop a ladder against it.
