Donald Trump's use of the border wall to raise money (for himself)

[Nova Land]

There's a thread up about Steve Bannon being indicted for using the border wall as a money-making scam. Interestingly, at about the same time Bannon and his accomplices were running that scam, Donald Trump was using a very similar name for a money-making operation of his own. I'm about to post about that in the Bannon thread, but wanted to start a separate thread here explicitly for discussion of Donald Trump's border wall money-making schemes so as not to distract discussion in the other thread away from Steve Bannon's and Brian Kolfage's scam.

Actually there are two Donald Trump money-making schemes I'm going to provide information about to start this thread. There may be more, and I'm interested in learning about any others people are familiar with. I'll start by re-posting the information I posted in the other thread, about Donald Trump asking people to become Build The Wall members, which was probably legal if it wasn't actually connected to Bannon's scam. And then I'll post about another border wall money-making scheme Trump ran in 2019 which looks like it might actually have broken the law the same way Bannon's did...

 

[Nova Land]

I don't know if Donald Trump endorsed or got a cut from Bannon's We Build The Wall scam, so it will be interesting following news stories about this. But I do know that Donald Trump ran similar money-making schemes of his own -- and one of them, coincidentally (?), had a name almost identical to Steve Bannon's.

Back in December 2018 Trump wrote to me several times asking me to contribute to his official Build The Wall fund. For instance, on December 22 he wrote:

This is a critical moment for the future and safety of our families, our loved ones and the United States of America.

That’s why I am launching the most important membership program ever - the OFFICIAL BUILD THE WALL MEMBERSHIP.

Please contribute at least $5 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT to become one of the FIRST Official Build The Wall Members and get on the list my team sends me tonight.​

A few days later he repeated the request:

This is your opportunity to go down in HISTORY as one of the American Patriots that saved our country and built THE WALL.

Please accept your Official Build The Wall Membership with a contribution of $5 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT.

And again, as the year drew to a close:

Unlike the career politicians, I will always fight for you. When our beautiful country’s national security is at stake, I will NEVER take a vacation.

Now I’m calling on you to step up and fight with me for the sake of our country’s safety, Nova.

Please contribute at least $5 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT to become an Official Build The Wall Member and your gift will be TRIPLE-MATCHED.

Thank you,
Donald J. Trump
President of the United States of America

He continued to push his Build The Wall campaign and to solicit money from me for it through January, February, March, April and May of 2019. For instance, from April 8:

Building the Wall is the ONLY way to stop the out of control flow of drugs and dangerous criminals that are coming into our country illegally.

I need every Official Build the Wall Member on board if we are going to send a message.

Please contribute $5 to become an Official Build the Wall Member before 11:59 PM TONIGHT and get on the next list my team sends me.

As far as I can tell, May 2019 is when Donald Trump suddenly stopped asking me to contribute money to him for Build The Wall. Interestingly, that's close to the time when official investigations began into Steve Bannon's We Build The Wall scam:

In a statement on Thursday, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said that after opening an investigation in May 2019, it had referred the case to the F.B.I.

...

I'll be back in a short while to post details of another Donald Trump border wall money-making scheme / likely scam.

 

[Nova Land]

In January 2019 Donald Trump sent out e-mails asking for people to send him donations so he could send bricks to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Here's some text from one of those e-mails:

For every $20.20 dollars raised by MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, we will send a BEAUTIFUL BRICK directly to the offices of Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.

Each brick will be etched with facts about border security to remind Democrats why WE NEED THE WALL.

Together, we can build a BIG BEAUTIFUL WALL around their offices to protect us from their radical left-wing agenda...

Okay, nothing illegal about that. There was a similar effort but in the opposite direction by Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, to get people donate to him for a fund to send thousands of roses to Nancy Pelosi. Trump's effort was a little more ambitious: he wanted to send 100,000 bricks. But the basic idea of sending a large quantity of something in order to send a message (and getting supporters to contribute money for that effort) is the same.

Now, $20.20 is a bit expensive for a brick -- especially for the fake foam bricks Trump planned to make and send -- so it's obviously more about a fund-raiser for Trump and his campaign than about sending Pelosi and Schumer bricks. If Trump actually used the money to make and send the bricks, and kept the profits for his campaign -- close to two million dollars if people had actually donated enough to send 100,000 bricks -- that's what people who donated should expect.

But did he? I can find no news stories about 100,000 bricks being delivered to Pelosi and Schumer. The only story I could find which claimed bricks were sent to Pelosi and Schumer was actually an InfoWars post with an advertising video by Trump's team asking people to send money so they could send bricks to Pelosi and Schumer. The video shows people in what looks like a postal facility packaging up brick to send via priority mail, but there is no indication of whether this is real or a simulation and no indication of how many bricks actually got sent. One would think that if 100,000 bricks actually got sent by Trump's team there'd be a news story about it somewhere. If there is, I was unable to find it.

Now, 20,000 bricks did get delivered to Pelosi and Schumer. That I was able to find stories about on right-wing sites. But those bricks were not from Trump's money-making brick campaign. They were from a similar scheme, by the group I Love My Freedom.

(For those who'd prefer not to click on a dubious right-wing site, here's a link to a story from People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch site about the I Love My Freedom brick campaign.

Now, I Love My Freedom was running their send bricks to Pelosi and Schumer operation at the same time as Trump was running his, so it's possible the two were actually the same. But neither one mentions the other; they charged a different price for their bricks ($20.20 for a Trump brick, $19.95 for an I Love My Freedom brick), and I Love My Freedom never mentioned a goal of 100,000 the way Trump did, and as far as I can tell they had a separate place for people to send their money than the Trump solicitations did, so I'm assuming the two are separate.

And if so, that's a problem. Because while I Love My Freedom did send out bricks -- presumably one brick sent for each donation they received -- I can find no record of the Trump campaign ever sending out any bricks. So if they took in money for bricks but didn't send them out, that would appear to be a scam. I'd be very interested in hearing more about this from anyone who knows more about this.

 

[Nova Land]

Something else I'd like to mention. If it turns out, as seems possible, that the I Love My Freedom brick campaign and the Trump Team brick campaign were actually the same or were in some way related, then I think a closer look needs to be given to whether the Steve Bannon build the wall campaign and the Donald Trump build the wall campaign were also related.

In both cases, money was being solicited in similar time periods. Both the I Love My Freedom brick campaign and the Trump brick campaign started and were largely carried out in January 2019. Trump's Build The Wall fund-raising effort ran from December 2018 through May 2019 -- less time than Bannon's similarly named effort, but overlapping for much of the time that Bannon's effort was especially active.

On the surface, there's no official connection between Bannon's operation and Trump's. Likewise, on the surface, there's no official connection between the I Love My Freedom operation and Trump's. But the similarities between the latter two are certainly amazing if they're purely coincidence.

And if the I Love My Freedom brick operation really was the same as Trump's brick operation, even though on the surface the money was going to different places, it raises the question of whether Trump was receiving any Bannon money even though on the surface the money was going to different places.

My suspicion of a connection here between Trump and Bannon is probably a conspiracy theory, since if Trump's build the wall money-raising scheme and Bannon's build the wall money-raising scheme were connected there'd probably already be some awareness of this by the investigators. But things sometimes do get overlooked, so I hope this is something the investigators have looked at already or will look at going forward.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I do hope these scam donation frauds are being investigated. Trump already got caught fleecing donors in his Trump Foundation (not to mention the hundreds of businesses he's used to fleece people).

 

[The Greater Fool]

Trumps Brick link: https://donate.donaldjtrump.com/send-nancy-a-brick

The small print says nothing about actually sending a brick, only where the donations go (Trump & RNC).

 

[Nova Land]

Trumps Brick link: https://donate.donaldjtrump.com/send-nancy-a-brick

The small print says nothing about actually sending a brick, only where the donations go (Trump & RNC).

The small print may not say it but the large print does. It says it quite clearly:

Please make a contribution of at least $20.20 by MIDNIGHT TONIGHT and we will send your brick directly to Nancy Pelosi's office.

[NOTE: No date is specified for when the MIDNIGHT TONIGHT applies, but that's not a problem. That's simply standard Trump solicitation language, and it applies to any and every day that someone chooses to send in a donation. As long as the donation is received between 12:00:0000000000...1 am and 11:59:999999999999... pm it will be accepted and -- or so they claim -- they will send a brick directly to Nancy Pelosi's office.]

The promise to send the bricks also appears in news stories about the operation. Here, for example, is what was reported in the Daily Mail:

Build that wall (of cash)! Trump campaign claims fundraising record with stunt promising to send 100,000 faux 'bricks' to Pelosi and Schumer.

President Donald Trump has finally found a way to secure funding for a brick and mortar project he craves – enlisting individual supporters to contribute to send 'beautiful' but 'faux' bricks to Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer.

The Trump campaign unveiled the novel fundraiser on Friday, as the government remained partially closed for its 28th day amid a standoff over Trump's demand for a $5.7 billion border wall.

With no talks set between Trump and Speaker Pelosi or Sen. Schumer, his campaign appealed to supporters to send in $20.20 to send a fake brick to their offices...

The email says Trump 'came up with a brilliant idea to make sure Chuck and Nancy have no choice but to listen to you, Friend.'

It states that for every $20.20 raised by a midnight deadline, 'we will send a BEAUTIFUL BRICK directly to the offices of Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.'

'Together, we can build a BIG BEAUTIFUL WALL around their offices to protect us from their radical left-wing agenda,' one of several email missives about it said.

That seems pretty clear that the Trump campaign publicly stated in their solicitation for funds that they would send bricks to Pelosi's and Schumer's offices. If they didn't actually send bricks, they took money under false pretenses and committed e-mail fraud.

And while there are reports of the Trump team soliciting money to send these bricks in exchange for these contributions, I can find no news story of them actually doing so.

 

[Puppycow]

The Justice Department won't indict a sitting president, right?

But maybe next year?

 

[Craig4]

The money probably didn't take a direct route to Trump. His campaign in 2016 and this year as well rented a lot of Trump properties for events. The question is if it's legal for the campaign to rent or patronize the candidate's properties. I'm not sure there's an answer yet. I'm sure there are rules about disclosure of such expenses. I imagine that if the rate charged the campaign were inflated, Trump and his organization might have some explaining to do.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The money probably didn't take a direct route to Trump. His campaign in 2016 and this year as well rented a lot of Trump properties for events. The question is if it's legal for the campaign to rent or patronize the candidate's properties. I'm not sure there's an answer yet. I'm sure there are rules about disclosure of such expenses. I imagine that if the rate charged the campaign were inflated, Trump and his organization might have some explaining to do.

Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich made their livings off these schemes.

 

[carlitos]

And while there are reports of the Trump team soliciting money to send these bricks in exchange for these contributions, I can find no news story of them actually doing so.

Interesting. I vaguely remember the brick-to-Nancy-and-Chuck thing, but never gave it a thought afterwards.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Interesting. I vaguely remember the brick-to-Nancy-and-Chuck thing, but never gave it a thought afterwards.

Sigh. I suppose, given the chaos at the USPS, the bricks were mailed but haven't arrived yet?