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Former US soldier Brian Kolfage, who has so far raised $ 20 million for the construction of Donald Trump's border wall as part of the #FundTheWall GoFundMe campaign, said Friday, January 11 that he was considering to transfer the raised funds for the construction of the nonprofit corporate wall. The federal government "will not be able to accept our donations any time soon," wrote Kolfage on the campaign page. "We are better equipped than our own government to use the funds raised to build a real wall on the southern border," he wrote.
The new non-profit organization, We Build the Wall, includes outgoing Kansas State Secretary Kris Kobach. and the founder of private security firm Erik Prince as board members, said Kolfage. But a GoFundMe spokesman told The Hill that he would repay all the donors money because the destination had changed.
This change echoes the transformation of another politically charged crowdfunding effort that Kolfage said to be associated with: a groundless GoFundMe campaign and ethically dark Donald Trump's family of choice at the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. This campaign raised more than $ 600,000. However, about $ 160,000 never reached their final destination.
The Kavanaugh Campaign was launched at the end of September 2018 by John Hawkins, founder of a conservative news site called Right Wing News, which had been banned from Facebook for spreading false information . Kolfage also helped raise funds, he told Fox News and Quartz. Hawkins, however, told Quartz that Kolfage "was not part of the fundraiser" for the Kavanaugh campaign.
The campaign lasted about a month and raised more than $ 600,000 "for Brett Kavanaugh's family to be able to use safety or as they please." As the GoFundMe page explains, Much of this donations came from donations of $ 25 or less.However, Kavanaugh refused to accept money because the guidelines on forensic ethics forbid him to do so, said Hawkins to donors, so Hawkins decided to donate this money to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, he wrote on the GoFundMe campaign page on October 30. Donors had a week to withdraw their money. Fund, he wrote at the time.
The campaign was finally closed with a total of $ 488,375 raised from 11,232 donors, according to its current page:
https: //www.gofundme .com / support-brett-kavanaugh
Yet about $ 160,000 of the funds collec Kavanaugh's campaign has never reached its destination. More than two months after the closing of the campaign, the archdiocese had only received a portion of the total amount raised. In an email to Quartz on December 21, a spokesman for the Archdiocese said:
To date, the Archdiocese of Washington has received about $ 322,600 from the Brett Kavanaugh GoFundMe campaign. As the Archdiocese has previously announced, the funds will be used to fund scholarships, youth activities and sports.
This part is owned by GoFundMe in case people who donate it would like to get their money back, Hawkins told Quartz. GoFundMe has not responded to several requests for comments from Quartz. When asked what it was, Kolfage told Quartz that he was only contributing to the fundraiser, but was not involved in his delivery, and that Hawkins had stated that the donation had been made.
Hawkins stated that he was not participating in the delivery either. , and that the missing amount is in the hands of GoFundMe, who has negotiated directly with the archdiocese. In an email to Quartz, he wrote:
By GoFundMe, US $ 322,676.71 was sent to the archdiocese and the remainder is earmarked to cover potential refunds and chargebacks. GoFundMe and the Archdiocese have negotiated the amount that GoFundMe could keep until February without me being involved.
GoFundMe did not respond to multiple requests for comments; the archdiocese did not respond to any request for additional information.
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