New look (finally!), same blog. A mishmash of informed snark, piquant opinions, refined nastiness, occasional schmaltz, & tawdry graphics, served up continuously since 2006 by COSMIC CONNIE, aka CONNIE L. SCHMIDT. Covering New-Age/New-Wage culture & crapitalism, pop spirituality & religion, pop psychology, self(ish)-help, alt-health hucksterism, conspiranoia, business babble, media silliness, Scamworld, politix, & related (or occasionally unrelated) matters of consequence.
You took his greatest song in vain
Though we'd made our refusal plain
You think you got away with it, now do ya?
You used this song to spread Trump's blight
You violated copyright
So now it seems we just might have to sue ya
Have to sue ya
Have to sue ya
Have to sue ya
Have to sue-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ya.
Leonard Cohen died one day before the most disastrous
presidential election in modern US history, though the world didn't hear about his death until a
couple of days after the election. Cohen has had a very devoted
following for decades, a following that arguably has only
increased and intensified since his death. So it's not surprising
that fans were furious over the co-opting of
"Hallelujah" by the RNC.
Yet, as anyone who is actually familiar with the lyrics knows,
there is also unintentional humor in this song choice. For
despite the repeated use of the word "Hallelujah," this
song is not triumphant or celebratory, except perhaps in an
ironic sense. Nor is it a religious or holy song, at least not in
the traditional "Christian" self-righteous sense
embraced by so many republicans and fake-embraced by Caligula himself -- though it does reflect Cohen's longstanding themes
of the symbiotic relationship between eroticism and holiness. The
point is that "Hallelujah" is in essence a breakup
song. It is all about disillusionment, cynicism, bitterness, and
ultimately resignation in the wake of a failed love affair.
I have little doubt that Cohen himself would not have approved of
this exploitation of his song by the RNC. When I first wrote
about this on Facebook on August 28, 2020,
I mentioned that I would be interested to see if there are any
responses from his estate and/or from Cohen's children, Adam and
Lorca. I also expressed curiosity as to whether the Trump
campaign paid applicable licensing fees for the public
performances of this song (or any other copyrighted songs they've
used, for that matter). After all, music copyright holders are
pretty fussy about these matters. You have to pay a licensing fee
for public performance of a copyrighted song, and even for quoting song lyrics in a book.
Some of my questions were subsequently answered. Representatives
from the RNC had indeed approached the Cohen estate to obtain
permission for a live performance of "Hallelujah."
Their request was denied. But they went ahead anyway, with a
recorded cover by Tori Kelly on the third night of the show, and,
following Trump's 70-minute, lie-filled rant on
the final night, a live performance by opera singer Christopher
Macchio. The Cohen estate was not pleased.
Michelle L. Rice, the legal
representative for the Cohen Estate, said the family was “surprised
and dismayed that the RNC would proceed knowing that the
Cohen Estate had specifically declined the RNC’s use
request, and their rather brazen attempt to politicize and
exploit in such an egregious manner ‘Hallelujah’, one of
the most important songs in the Cohen song catalogue.” As
such, the Cohen Estate is “exploring legal actions.”
Rice added that “had the RNC requested another song, ‘You
Want it Darker’, for which Leonard won a posthumous Grammy
in 2017, we might have considered approval of that song.”
November 13, 2016:And even though it all went wrong...
I wasn't the only one to view Leonard Cohen's death as
darkly symbolic of the looming era of Trumpism.
November 10, 2016: You want it darker
I wrote this one shortly after I found out about Cohen's
passing.
November 9, 2016:Mourning in Amerika, and what to do next
Written the day after the election. Even then we knew it
would be bad, but our expectations have been surpassed many times over in
the years since then.
Americans have always been famous for their can-do
attitude, and for their willingness to take matters into their
own hands when the Powers That Be are moving too slowly for them.
Maybe that's why so many people bought into a crowdfunding
project to privately build the border wall that #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump
has been promising to his xenophobic base for years. But now the
leaders of that project, most recently known as We Build The
Wall, are under federal indictment for defrauding hundreds of
thousands of donors. The United States Attorney for the Southern
District of New York has unsealed the indictments, as reported on the Department of Justice web site on
August 20, 2020.
Brian Kolfage, Stephen
Bannon, and Two Others Alleged to Have Funneled Hundreds of
Thousands of Dollars From the Organization to Kolfage; All
Four Defendants Allegedly Profited From Their Roles in the
Scheme
Audrey Strauss, the Acting United
States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and
Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Field
Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”),
announced the unsealing of an indictment charging BRIAN
KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA
for their roles in defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors
in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as
$25 million. The defendants were arrested this morning.
“We Build the Wall” that raised more than KOLFAGE will be
presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hope T. Cannon
in the Northern District of Florida. BANNON will be
presented today in the Southern District of New York.
BADOLATO will be presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge
Thomas Wilson in the Middle District of Florida. SHEA will
be presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L.
Mix in the District of Colorado. The case is assigned to
U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in the Southern District
of New York.
If you're like me, you may be tempted to declare
that the folks who poured their money into this
scam in good faith completely deserved to be bilked, since they were
consciously donating to a cause rooted in the hateful xenophobia
and bigotry that form the very foundation of toxic Trumpism. As
you'll see below, that's precisely the view I had when I first
heard of this scheme, but in my more charitable moments I have
made a (mostly futile) effort to view at least some of these
donors as merely misguided and fearful rather than hateful. In
any case, from a legal as well as arguably a moral standpoint,
fraud is fraud, and people who commit fraud should be held
accountable. And so far, it looks like there's at least an effort
in that direction.
I am as (un)shocked as you probably are that malignant nihilist Steve Bannon,
who infested the White House for a while early in the Trump
"administration," is among those indicted. Bannon, who was arrested by US Postal Inspection agents while
lounging off the the coast of Connecticut on a $28 million yacht
owned by a Chinese businessman, has
pleaded not guilty. (He called his arrest "a political hit job" -- an effort to stoke fear in people who support
Trump's wall -- and he says he isn't going to back down.) Bannon was
released on a $5 million bond and ordered not to travel abroad,
or to haul his spotty, bloated carcass aboard a private plane or
a yacht (such as the one he was arrested on), sans court
approval. Given Bannon's extraordinary arrogance, his
massive upopularity, and his general repulsiveness, not to
mention his ongoing threat to American democracy, it's not
surprising that he has been the main focus of most of the
reporting and unabashed schadenfreude. I totally get that. But I
was particularly interested in this story not only because I
think Bannon is a loathsome toad (absolutely no offense intended
to toads), but also because as it happens, the man who actually
started We Build The Wall, Brian Kolfage, was the subject of a
blog post that I wrote and published back on January 12, 2019
about this project and its many red flags.
Don't go looking for it in the 2019 Whirled archives, though. Out
of an (over)abundance of caution I took the post down a few hours
after I had published it -- something I very rarely do. I put it
back in my drafts folder, even though I continued to update it
even after it had been removed from public view.
Why did I remove it? Simply because of Kolfage's fiercely
litigious history and the fact that he had so many well-funded
backers. Not that anybody reads this blog, but again... abundance
of caution. Here's my post about that deleted post.
But in light of the current development, I feel moved to
reinstate the original post here and now. You'll see a lot more about Kolfage's volatility and litigiousness in that post, as well as info about the history of his boondoggle, which began life as a GoFundMe called We The People Will Build The Wall, with a goal to raise a billion dollars, which would then be handed over to the government to help fund Trump's dream project. When that effort ran into glitches and logistical problems -- not to mention complaints -- Kolfage moved to Plan B, and the project was re-branded as We Build The Wall.
Back from the drafts folder: the original Whirled
post Although much has happened since January 2019
(boy, is that an understatement), I felt that this post
nevertheless provides some pertinent background. Since the
stories about his questionable fundraising first broke, Kolfage
has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has offered details that
he says counter some of the most damning reports. And I can't vouch for the functionality of all of
the links in this post -- they were valid at the time I first published it -- but I'm keeping them intact anyway. With those
disclaimers in mind, here is the original post in its entirety:
Big sale at Wall-mart:
right-wing grifter gives donors another chance to squander
their money
It really pains me to rag about a military veteran,
particularly one who has been grievously wounded. In general
I go out of my way to express compassion and support for the
(mostly young) men and women who risk and all too often lose
their lives in service to their country, though I have zero
sympathy or empathy for the war profiteers and politicians who
continually put these young people in harm's way in order to
enrich themselves.
But Brian Kolfage is a veteran who, I think, richly deserves
any ragging that comes his way. Kolfage is a decorated war hero and triple amputee
who lost both legs and an arm after a rocket attack in 2004
during Operation Iraqi Freedom. So... thank you for your
service and all that, Brian. Really. But being a wounded war
hero -- even "the most severely wounded Airman ever to
survive any war," as your promos continually remind us
-- doesn't give a person moral or legal license to exploit
that "war hero" persona in order to spread lies and
scam people, which is what you, sir, have allegedly been
doing. (I'll elaborate, with links, momentarily.)
Kolfage became part of the news cycle (again) last month when
he started a GoFundMe campaign, We The People Will Build the Wall, to pay for #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump's extravagantly expensive
(and useless) xenophobic-dogwhistle
vanity project. The goal was to raise a cool billion of We
The People's hard-earned dollars within one month, and then
to somehow spirit those moneys over to the government to help
build Donnie's wall. Kolfage wasn't really clear about how
the getting it to the government part would work, but he
assured his marks that he and his team would work it out
somehow. And he promised that if the fund didn't reach the
one bil goal, or come significantly close, 100 percent of the
donations would be refunded. That was Plan A.
Well, now it seems that they're on to Plan B. While
significantly more than 300,000 people who apparently have
more money than sense have donated to the cause, raising more
than $20 million and making it one of the most successful
GoFundMe campaigns ever, that's pretty far short of $1
billion. So now GoFundMe is poised to issue refunds to donors. But wait, there's more! Instead of simply getting
their money back and spending it on something useful, the
suckers who donated have another chance to potentially get
scammed while expressing their various fears and hatreds.
For Kolfage has announced a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit
corporation, We Build The Wall, Inc.,
which is gladly accepting donations, and to which he will
happily re-route any donations made to the GoFundMe page.
(That GoFundMe page, by the way, is still up and running as
of this writing, making the whole issue a little confusing at
the moment.) The nonprof is based in Florida, where Kolfage
lives, though the address for old-school rubes who want to
send a check is a P.O. box in Houston.
By way of 'splaining the decision to form a nonprof, Kolfage
insists that he and his team are much more capable of
analyzing needs and getting the job done than any dumb ol'
government analysts, and certainly more capable than those
horrid obstructionist unpatriotic Democrats, who, according
to Kolfage, will do anything in their power to thwart this
patriotic endeavor. Which brings us to the part that is even
more interesting than the decision to funnel everything into
a nonprof: the lineup of folks who are part of that
"team." Here's more on Gizmodo,
from a writer, Rhett Jones, who minces no words.
At the moment, donations are still
rolling in on the GoFundMe page (which complicates the
official story of what triggered the refunds) and Kolfage
is far from done. It remains to be seen just how many
previous donors will choose to pass their money to the
new effort, but Kolfage has assembled
a rogues gallery of prominent conservative grifters to
serve on his new border wall construction company’s
advisory board. Some of the board members include:
David Clarke, the disgraced former sheriff of Milwaukee who is
the subject of numerous lawsuits related to abuse of inmates. Clarke is also a big fan
of wearing shiny trinkets that look like military
medals, but are not.
Kris Kobach, the Kansas
politician who spreads fantasies about voter fraud. Kobach oversaw
Trump’s election integrity commission which was
shut down without issuing a report after it
failed to find evidence of widespread voter
fraud.
Erik Prince, the founder of the
Blackwater security group. Prince is one of the
shadiest people on the planet and oversaw
Blackwater when its mercenaries were
indiscriminately committing war crimes in Iraq. [Erik Prince is also Trump "Education" Secretary
Betsy DeVos' brother. ~
CC]
It seems the only person missing
from Kolfage’s impressive board of imposters and
sadists is Sebastian Gorka.
Clearly, I'm not in sync politically with Kolfage and I do
not share his goal for a walled-off southern border. That
said, I can disagree with someone's politics without
believing that the person in question is a scammer. (Then
again, as I've observed ad nauseam on this very blog,
in the Trump era the line between politics and Scamworld has been
blurred almost beyond recognition.)
Trump or no Trump, though, it appears that Kolfage has a
history of deceptive marketing, to put it politely.
Kolfage in Facebook posts that have
been deleted said that he was working with Walter Reed,
Brooke Army Medical Center and Landstuhl Regional Medical
Center. Representatives for the centers told BuzzFeed
News that they don't have record of Kolfage working with
veterans at their facilities.
“We do not have a record of Mr. Kolfage visiting
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in any official
capacity after 2012,” Gia Oney, chief of public affairs
at Landstuhl, told the online outlet. “We have no
record of a donation made in his name to Landstuhl
Regional Medical Center.”
The Hill piece cited above sources a January 10, 2019 report from BuzzFeed, which not only mentions the veteran funding scheme
but also Kolfage's documented history of running web sites
and Facebook pages promoting right-wing conspiranoid and
racist content. In other words, Kolfage pushed fake news,
some of it racist, to line his own pockets.
One former employee of Kolfage's, Lindsay Lowery, aka Prissy
Holly, worked for Kolfage's chief conservative news website,
Freedom Daily, for about a year in 2017. But it appears that
it was on Facebook rather than on the website that Kolfage
really did his dirty work, according to Lowery.
"After I started challenging
some of his business decisions that I felt were reckless
for the company and for my career, the real Brian
emerged,” she told BuzzFeed News. “Everything is only
about his ‘war hero’ persona and money. If there’s
a perceived slight on his part, he viciously attacks
people...and, in my case, tries to destroy their life and
livelihood.”
BuzzFeed News reviewed a cache of internal emails and
text messages from several of Kolfage’s former
employees and acquaintances that show how he pushed to
sensationalize and fabricate right-wing content on
Facebook to amass clicks, manipulate users, and in the
process, make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in
advertising revenue. In one text, he claimed to run a “multi-million
business.”
In addition to Lowery, three sources corroborated the
documents and their experience with Kolfage, but were
afraid to go on the record, citing his past behavior of
lashing out and threatening legal action against those
who have spoken against him.
Former employees told BuzzFeed News that Kolfage
instructed his crew to produce Facebook content to more
flagrantly convey a false narrative, in one instance
photoshopping former president Obama’s head onto
another body to make it appear as though he was having an
affair, with the caption, “BREAKING!! OBAMA BUSTED!!!
VIDEO LEAKED!!”
Another former employee, who didn't want to
be identified due to fear of retaliation, said that at first
her work with Kolfage was going pretty well; the pay was
fair, and she was able to pitch and write stories. But as
time went by her work and the company's mission changed.
“He started creating more
[Facebook] pages. I think he had around 10 when I was
there and I remember I would see shares and be like, ‘Where
did this page come from?’” she recalled. “He was
very smart in how he would do it. He never wanted the
truth. It was all just for clicks, and the more
inflammatory, the better. I felt dirty writing the stuff.”
Later on in the BuzzFeed piece we're told
that in one email to employees, Kolfage warned them, “NEVER
tell anyone who operates Freedomdaily. It’s a tightly
guarded secret, and our LLC has a privacy veil set up to
protect it. It allows us to operate without consequence where
we can’t be sued or attacked by trolls.”
Without consequence? Sounds like fun! Alas, Facebook did
eventually suspend several of his pages, along with hundreds
of others, during the Great Fake Account Purge of October
2018. Kolfage claimed that the pages that were suspended were indeed fakes but that he had nothing to do with
them (see the sub-head,
"Buzzfeed raises questions," in the linked
article).
But the suspensions just prompted Kolfage to double down on
his role as a crusader for "American values," most
notably, free speech. One of the things he did to fight for
free speech was to start another online fundraising venture
called Fight4FreeSpeech, which
raised more than $73,000 of a $100,000 goal in two months,
with the money to be used for... well, beats the heck out of
me. I think it's to sue Facebook for deleting his fake
accounts that he had nothing to do with, or something like
that. Anyway, he apparently has moved that campaign to a new
web site.
Ken Vanderzanden was one of [the
people Kolfage sued]. In 2013, he came across one of
Kolfage’s Facebook posts in which he dissected Obama’s
birth certificate in an effort to prove it was fake.
Amused, the 64-year-old sent him a private message
pointing out some flaws in Kolfage’s analysis.
“He turned my private statement into a public statement
and made a photo of me a meme, telling the world what a
horrible person I was,” Vanderzanden told BuzzFeed News
by phone from his home in Portland. “I was endlessly
harassed on Facebook and then started getting death
threats to my house and had to change my phone number and
go into hiding for a while.”
Kolfage published the retiree’s name, address, and
phone number on his personal page, according to court
documents. Vanderzanden repeatedly reported the
harassment until Facebook finally shut down the veteran’s
profile, prompting Kolfage to sue for defamation.
Ultimately, they reached a settlement in which both sides
agreed to end any disparagement and pay their own legal
fees, which Kolfage turned to GoFundMe and other
fundraising efforts to cover.
According to the January 2019 recent BuzzFeed piece
previously cited, former Kolfage employee Lindsay Lowery said
that both she and her husband were threatened and harassed by
Kolfage after she quit working for him. Two other former
employees confirm this story. Lowery says that she'd seen her
former boss go after others, but that being on the receiving
end of his harassment was terrifying. "He thinks he's
untouchable," she told BuzzFeed.
So I'm thinking that maybe Brian Kolfage isn't such a hero
after all. And while I am normally sympathetic to people who
get taken in by scammers, I will find it immensely difficult
to work up any compassion whatsoever for those who choose to
throw their money at any of his schemes -- either through
GoFundMe campaigns or through web sites or nonprofits -- and
who might subsequently feel that they've been had. I'm
especially unsympathetic to folks who participate in this
latest scam. Like those who voted for Trump, these Wall-mart
shoppers deserve what they get. I'm out of patience.
UPDATE: On January 16 [2019], CBS News reported that GoFundMe donors to Kolfage's wall project have so
far given $7 million to his new nonprofit -- or, rather, they have allowed their donations to
the GoFundMe page to be redirected to the nonprof. Donors who
take no action to have their funds redirected will have their
money automatically refunded by April 11, and those who
specifically ask for a refund should get it back within three
business days. Kolfage also says he has received 3,500
mail-in donations so far, but hasn't yet totaled them. And in
an email to CBS News, Kolfage disputed the BuzzFeed report
that questioned his fundraising for the veterans' mentorship
program. He claimed that he used the funds to travel to the
hospitals where he conducted his "award winning mentor
trips" to visit wounded veterans, and called the
BuzzFeed piece a "fake article."
Two days previous to the CBS News piece, an investigative
reporter for The Daily Caller -- which, I should note, is a
conservative site -- wrote that Kolfage's new nonprofit org raises, in the words of
Charity Watch president Daniel Borochoff, a "huge red
flag." According to the
article, Kolfage is refusing to answer basic questions about
his new nonprofit, which was actually founded two weeks
before it was announced. And though he claims that the bylaws
of We Build The Wall, Inc. prevent him from taking any salary
from donor funds that originate from GoFundMe, he refused to
provide The Daily Caller News Foundation with a copy of the
nonprof's bylaws to corroborate his claim.
The Daily Caller also noticed the interesting fact that I
mentioned in my original post above: check donations are
being directed to an entirely different organization with a
P.O. box in Houston. Kolfage has ignored multiple inquiries
from The Daily Caller asking why he is directing check
donations to an org in a different state (We Fund the Wall,
Inc.), and whether donations sent to that org can be used to
compensate him in any manner. Another big question The Daily
Caller had was why Kolfage waited over two weeks to inform
his donors of his intention to transfer their contributions
to his new nonprof. He has ignored multiple inquiries about
this point as well.
And here's a link to the founding documents, which were signed on December 27, 2018. The stated
purpose of the nonprof is "to promote social welfare
within the meaning of Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal
Revenue Code, including but not limited to funding,
construction, administering, and maintaining a United States
Southern Border Wall and the processes associated
therewith." Seems to me that this give Kolfage a lot of
leeway to do whatever he wishes with We The People's
hard-earned bucks.
###
Back to the present: hold your applause I will of course continue to follow this developing story, and I
hope you will too. Politico has reported that in the wake of
Bannon's arrest Trump has distanced himself from Bannon, calling private
funding of The Wall "inappropriate." Actually, as ProPublica reported on an August 1, 2020
update to an article originally published on July 2 in partnership with The Texas Tribune, Trump initially
distanced himself from the We Build The Wall project after it was
revealed that the wall is unsound and could be in danger of
falling into the Rio Grande. He said that the project was built
to embarrass him.
And even though Trump Sr. now claims that he
knows nothing about Kolfage's project, Forbes noted these interesting
points:
Trump also “personally and repeatedly”
lobbied for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to award a $1.28
billion wall-building contract to Fisher Industries, a
politically-connected firm that was also helping We Build The Wall build a private portion of
the wall, according to the Washington
Post.
The company, which is not mentioned in the indictment, is run
by GOP donor and frequent Fox News guest Tommy Fisher and won the contract after it “captured
Trump's attention” and
was “repeatedly
touted” by him,
according to CNN.
The White House declined to comment on whether Trump knew of
the connection between Fisher and We Build The Wall.
And I imagine that scads of Wall fans and
xenophobes will dismiss this whole case either as "fake
news" or as an overblown political witch hunt -- or
"hit job," as Bannon put it -- and that they will
support Brian Kolfage as the hero/martyr he so wants us to
believe that he is. I'm guessing that they'll see this case not
as an indictment of Kolfage and his project but rather as an
indictment of the Southern District of New York, which has
remained unafraid of going after Trump's dodgy business dealings
and other related matters.
But even if those charged are tried and ultimately
convicted, which at this point is far from a certainty, it's
anyone's guess how this will end. You only have to think of Michael Flynn, or Roger Stone, to know that
these days, anything goes. In Trumpistan, you're guilty until
proven innocent if you're a critic of Trump, and innocent even
after proven guilty if you're a Trump crony or sycophant.
So as delightful as the vision of Steve Bannon in handcuffs may
be, maybe hold off on the celebration for now.
Update, August 21, 2020: I
have added several links and other content to this post since I
first uploaded it on August 20. ~ CC
October 7, 2016:Back into the black hole of politix...
Kris Kobach, one of the thus-far-unindicted principals
behind We Build The Wall, is most notorious for his
obsession with nonexistent voter fraud. While this post
doesn't discuss Kobach, it does cover the voter-fraud
myth on which Trump capitalized during the 2016 campaign.
(Some things never change: he has doubled down on that
obsession in 2020.)
May 31, 2016: Donald Trump's Scamworld playbook isn't unique
Though the Trump University cases have been settled since
this post was written, there's still a lot of info about
Trump's scammy background and the cultural context in
which he was and is allowed to get away with scamming and
lying.
August 20. 2020:Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach, and the 'We Build the
Wall' Scandal
Writing for investigative journalist Greg Palast's site,
Zach D. Roberts sheds some much-needed light on We Build
The Wall principal and founding attorney Kris Kobach,
who, though as mentioned above was not named in the
current indictment, is a scoundrel who's just as much of
a threat to American democracy as Trump is. (Also be sure
to read the linked excerpt about Kobach, taken from Greg Palast's new book, How
Trump Stole 2020.)
August 20, 2020:Bannon Grifter Indictment: More Steel Bracelets
for Team Trump
Amanda Carpenter, writing for The Bulwark, is a writer
after my own heart (of snark). She really nails Trump and
the rogue's gallery of grifters with whom he has long
surrounded himself.
August 20, 2020:Trump struggles to explain the 'culture of
lawlessness' around him Spoiler alert: The best he could come up with,
when cornered by a reporter, was, "There was great
lawlessness in the Obama administration. They spied on our
campaign illegally." But don't let the spoiler keep you from
reading Steve Benen's short but link-filled piece on the utter
hypocrisy of the man who claims to be "tough on crime"
and "the law and order president."
August 19, 2019:Brian Kolfage; A Pattern of Cons From The Weird Turn Professional blog (the name of the blog is apparently derived from a quotation by the late "gonzo journalist," Hunter S. Thompson). The blog's author, whose name doesn't seem to appear on his blog (maybe I'm just overlooking it?), claims to have originally broken the story of Kolfage's scammery. Whether he did or not, his post is filled with exhibits and links that seem to reinforce the narrative of Kolfage as a serial huckster. Embedded in the post is this video, dated August 6, 2019, stating that Kolfage's project was under criminal investigation in the state of Florida. If I had seen that vid when it was first posted, I would have reinstated my back-burnered January 2019 blog post then and there.
Ongoing: The Brian Kolfage Facebook "fan" page, which publishes whiny posts appearing to be from
Kolfage himself (going on and on about "witch
hunts" and whatnot). The right-wing followers and fans are just eating it up. Facebook's transparency info states that the
confirmed page owner of the Brian Kolfage page is the
above-mentioned Citizens of the American Republic in Mclean,
Virginia. The page was originally created in November 2014, under
the name, "Fans Of Brian Kolfage -- American Patriot."
At the time this link is being posted here (on August 25, 2020),
584,065 people "like" this page, and 630,184 folks are
following it. Kolfage's latest post at this time compares the
SDNY action against him to the court action against the National
Rifle Association (NRA). He writes:"I gave 3 limbs defending this freedom, and I'd proudly
give another to fight back at this injustice to preserve the
future of this nation."
###
So... don't expect the hero/martyr narrative, either from
Bannon or Kolfage, to let up any time soon. And as I noted in
my post above, it would be a mistake to assume that any of
these con artists will see a moment of jail time.
Quick take: Donald Trump, his sycophantic
mega-donor Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame, and sleepy-eyed Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson have, in various
ways, been pushing an unproven supplement -- an extract from the
(highly toxic) oleander plant -- as a "cure" for
COVID-19. The supplement, manufactured by Phoenix Biotechnology
and aggressively promoted by the company's Vice Chairman and
Director, Andrew Whitney, could potentially make Lindell and
Carson a shipload of money -- and could earn Trump some
much-needed political capital, if not actual money. Trump has
been strongly suggesting that the US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) "approve" oleandrin, and Whitney has been putting
pressure on the agency as well. Almost certainly there are
multiple potential conflicts of interest here... but it's just
another day in Trumpistan.
Watch: CNN's Anderson Cooper nails the MyShillow guy, Mike Lindell, on Lindell's unfounded claims about oleandrin.
In March of this year I published a post about some of the craziness inspired by the
COVID-19 pandemic. I reviewed not only
some of the wackier conspiracy theories about the virus, but also
some of the fraudulent "cures" or unproven remedies
that various hucksters were pushing. Now there's another miracle
"cure," which at best is unproven: oleandrin, an extract from the extremely toxic oleander shrub, manufactured by Phoenix Biotechnology and currently being pushed by Andrew Whitney, Vice Chairman and Director of the Phoenix Biotech board. And #NotMyPresident Donald Trump,
his hyper-enthusiastic mega-donor Mike Lindell of MyPillow
(MyShillow?) fame, and Trump's [totally unqualified] HUD
director, Ben
Carson, seem to have jumped aboard the
oleandrin express.
To the alarm of some government health
officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the
Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the
oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or,
alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite
lack of proof that it works.
Driving the news: The
experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to
Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and
MyPillow founder and CEO Mike
Lindell, a big Trump
backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company
that develops the product.
Lindell told Axios that in the
meeting, Trump "basically said: …'The FDA
should be approving it.'"
The White House did not respond to
requests for comment.
...It's part of a pattern in which
entrepreneurs, often without rigorous vetting, push unproven
products to Trump — knowing their sales pitches might catch
his eye. Trump will then urge FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn
to "look at" or speed up approval.
In March, Trump personally lobbied
Hahn to authorize hydroxychloroquine's emergency use
to treat COVID-19.
The FDA obliged. But in June,
after a large trial, the agency revoked that
authorization and warned of the "risk of heart rhythm
problems" in COVID-19 patients treated with the
drug.
Why oleandrin? Is there any evidence at all that it might work?
Well... maybe. And maybe not. Swan continues:
A
July 2020 study
from the University of Texas at Galveston
shows, in a laboratory setting, that oleandrin can inhibit
the coronavirus in monkey kidney cells. This study has not
been peer reviewed and one of the authors
of the study, Robert Newman,
is chairman of Phoenix Biotechnology's scientific advisory
board — the company developing the oleandrin product.
Phoenix Biotechnology's website
listed Newman as the president of the company and a member of its board of directors until quite
recently (Google's
cache shows he
held both roles as of August 12th).
When Axios checked the website on
Friday night, Newman was still listed as president.
But on Saturday evening, after Axios had emailed
questions to Whitney, Newman was no longer listed as
president of the company; the website listed him only
as a scientific adviser.
In an interview with Axios, Mike Lindell said that he's such a believer in oleandrin that he
now has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology and wants to
make sure that every American has access to this "cure"
for COVID-19. He explained that he first became aware of the
botanical when Andrew Whitney called him on Easter Sunday with
the news that it could cure COVID-19. Lindell then took the
information to Ben Carson, who hopped aboard. Lindell claims that
he has been taking oleandrin himself and has shared it with
family and friends; he believes it's kept him from getting
COVID-19 and has cured other people. This despite the lack of
published clinical studies showing that the botanical either
cures or prevents COVID-19.
So far the FDA hasn't said the product is safe or effective for
the purposes claimed by its backers. In fact Lindell said that
the head of the FDA, Stephen Hahn, wasn't even in July's Oval
Office meeting about oleandrin.
As for Whitney, he says he approached Lindell because he's one of
the country's greatest businessmen, and he was impressed that
Lindell mobilized MyPillow to make face masks.
Turds of a feather... It's no big surprise that Mike Lindell would be
pursuing the oleandrin business op, nor that he would be the
conduit between Whitney and Trump. Lindell is, if nothing else,
an inveterate hustledork, and he sure does love his president. From the Washington Post, May 27, 2020:
Mike Lindell is what you might get if
you took the political personalities of Donald Trump and Mike
Pence, shred them down in a hammer mill, mixed the aggregate
together, stuffed it in a linen case and sold the product
between segments on Fox News.
He’s a serial As-Seen-On-TV entrepreneur and an evangelical
Christian who travels the country preaching the Gospel. He’s
also a mile-a-minute talker who used to own and tend a bar
and is quite comfortable swapping stories for hours with
anyone who will listen.
“When you hang out with Mike, he has that kind of
hyperkinetic energy,” said Matt Schlapp, who runs the
annual Conservative Political Action Conference, at which
Lindell has spoken. “You might wonder, ‘Did this guy take
too much cold medicine?’ ”
But Lindell swears he’s not on anything. Not anymore. He’s
a former crack addict, a retired card counter with a history
of bad debts, near-death experiences and soured marriages
before fully accepting God into his heart. Such a past might
be a liability for someone thinking about moving into a life
of politics...
Not to worry. In today's GOP, it doesn't really
matter what your past is. Donald Trump lowered that bar into the
ground. You can't even see the bar anymore.
Nor does it probably matter much that in some respects Lindell
seems a tad hypocritical: another rich bidness man who reaped the
benefits of the infamous 2018 Trump tax cuts, and boasted up,
down, and sideways about the new era of prosperity that Trump had
ushered in -- but then, instead of letting all of those gains
trickle down to his employees, he pissed on them (the employees,
not the gains). This is from a May 2019 CityPages piece:
...it now seems Lindell's sugar high
has come to a halt. Last week, he announced the layoffs of
150 MyPillow production workers in Skakopee [Minnesota].
The official rationale was the need to take production space
at the facility to accommodate shipping for a new venture,
MyStore.com, an “online store for entrepreneurs and
inventors to sell their products.”
Left unsaid was the apparent decline in MyPillow sales, which
have made the production of 150 workers unnecessary.
Not all Lindell's woes can be attributed to the larger
economy. He's facing boycotts over
his advertising support of Fox News bombardiers Laura
Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. He's also soured at least some
customers with his business practices.
Two years ago, he was forced to lay off 140 people after
complaints of false advertising.
The Better Business Bureau withdrew the company's accreditation, and
changed its rating from an A+ to F.
Two years later, that grade remains a F. So while Lindell may
have a generous friend in the White House, it appears his
customers still have some say over his continued wealth...
It certainly hasn't all been an easy road for
Lindell. Back in 2017 the Better Business Bureau accused him of
swindling customers, an accusation that came on top of
"multiple lawsuits and burned partners," as The Daily Beast reported in April of that year.
MyPillow, a pillow and mattress-topper
company best known for its infomercials and outlandish
medical claims, came out swinging for Donald
Trump during the
presidential election. “I’m here to give all my
credibility to Mr. Donald Trump,” the company’s founder
and spokesperson Mike Lindell told Fox News during an
interview at the final presidential debate, where he had
scored seats to support Trump.
But Lindell might be the rare businessman with less
credibility than Trump. The Better Business Bureau yanked
MyPillow’s accreditation this week and slapped the company
with an “F” rating, over what customers described as a
misleading ad campaign.
MyPillow has racked up years of customer complaints, from
allegations of the pillow’s trumped-up health claims, to a
recent complaint that
reads “I want to murder Mike Lindell” 15 times and
accuses the company of selling overpriced wares.
The BBB also took issue with MyPillow’s price scheme,
albeit in less violent language. The consumer rights
organization cited MyPillow’s ongoing “buy one, get one
free” offers, which advertises two pillows—usually $49.99
each—for “half price” at $99.97. The total savings were
one cent. In October,
MyPillow customers filed a class-action suit claiming to have
been duped by the offer.
And what about those burned partners? Also from
the Beast article:
In
2013, Salesforce sued
MyPillow for $550,000, accusing the company of breaching
contract and stiffing them on a $125,000 credit card bill.
Earlier that year, two of Lindell’s early backers accused
him of cutting them out of their rightful share in the
company, which they said was a combined 42 percent.
Given his troubles, it's not surprising that
Lindell would be on the lookout for new business ops. "Well,
gee, Cosmic Connie, that's what entrepreneurs do,"
you might be saying. "Even the honest ones." Point
taken; and in fact for the past few years Lindell has been
putting money into other ventures too, such as financing films
for the theocracy -- one example being an anti-Planned-Parenthood
(actually anti-abortion) documentary, Unplanned. From The Hollywood Reporter, November 21, 2018:
Lindell also has a cameo in Unplanned
that's sure to raise eyebrows in certain circles, as he is
seen bulldozing a Planned Parenthood site to make way for the
headquarters of an anti-abortion group called 40 Days for
Life. "I'm pro-life and I'm happy to do it,"
Lindell says.
The film did respectably at the box office, though critical response was less
than enthusiastic, and the American division of Planned Parenthood stated that
its arguments were false. More than likely, the movie did little
to change anyone's mind about abortion or Planned Parenthood.
But this oleander product may just be the Next Big Thing for
which Lindell has been searching.
Ben Carson's involvement with oleandrin isn't really all that
surprising either, considering that he has rock-solid
Scamworld/huckster creds, even to the point of lying about his
involvement with dodgy supplement MLM firm Mannatech -- a matter
that was widely reported way back in 2015 when he was still a GOP
presidential candidate. From New York magazine, October 29, 2015:
Last night’s Republican presidential
debate was hardly lacking in demonstrable lies uttered with total conviction. One of the more audacious was Ben Carson’s
claim that he never had “any kind of relationship” with
controversial nutritional-supplement company Mannatech.
"Well, that’s easy to answer,” Carson replied. “I
didn’t have an involvement with them. That is total
propaganda. I did a couple speeches for them. I did speeches
for other people. They were paid speeches. It is absolutely
absurd to say that I had any kind of relationship with them.”
...Carson’s non-relationship with Mannatech dates back to
at least 2004, when he spoke before a meeting of its sales
associates, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. In that address, the
celebrated neurosurgeon credited Mannatech’s supplements
with curing his own prostate cancer.
“Within about three weeks my symptoms went away, and I was
really quite amazed,” he says to loud applause in a video of the
event.
That was then. For the past few years, Carson has been largely preoccupied with making life more miserable for the financially and
residentially challenged, while continuing to spew some of his nutcakey ideas. But who says he can't do a little bit of oleandrin
hustling on the side? Lest you be tempted to trust Carson's judgment on
oleandrin as a plausible COVID remedy because he's an actual
doctor, albeit a retired one, and that he is, after all, a member
of Trump's coronavirus task force, I would ask you to consider
two points: (1) the aforementioned years-long involvement with a
highly questionable supplement MLM and Carson's lies about that
involvement; and (2) the fact that his specialties were
neurosurgery and pediatric neurosurgery (and though generally
renowned, he was known to push ethical boundaries at times), the point being that Carson is not an expert
on antiviral drugs or infectious diseases. And let's add a third
point for the heck of it: Carson's shaky relationship with actual science (and that's putting it kindly).
And Trump? You probably know that he too has a solid Scamworld background,
along with just generally being a serial failed businessman (and, of course, he and his family continue to capitalize on his
presidency). But even if Trump doesn't
have his pudgy fingers in the oleandrin pie as of yet, even if he
has no plans to make money from it, there's a good bit of
political capital that he stands to gain if the product really
takes off. The political factor alone is a reasonable explanation
of why Trump continued, against the advice of most experts, to
push hydroxychloroquine as a COVID remedy (though there was also
speculation that he had some financial interests there too), and
more than likely his desire to look like a COVID hero war
president sheds light on the fact that back in April, he seemed to be suggesting even more dangerous remedies.
Perhaps Trump reasons that if this oleander thing works, or even
just look like it works, he could be perceived as the standard
bearer for the defeat of the COVID monster. Maybe people might
even forget about his gross mismanagement of the pandemic crisis.
Or maybe not. It's all about the money (as usual) Andrew Whitney and Phoenix Biotech are
currently pursuing two avenues for their fruit of the poisonous
shrub: having it approved as an actual drug to treat or cure
COVID-19; or as a dietary supplement, sold with the disclaimer
that the FDA has not evaluated claims made by the manufacturers
and that the product is not intended to prevent, diagnose, treat,
or cure disease. My money is on Whitney pushing hard for the
latter option, since the approval process for a drug is longer
and more rigorous than that for a mere supplement.
So far FDA
director Hahn, who is an MD, seems to have resisted Whitney's
pressure, which I'm thinking is a good thing, given the great
risks. The medical profession, aware of those risks, has reacted
with alarm, as reported on Med Page Today:
The thought of another potentially
dangerous compound being touted as a "miracle cure"
by the Trump administration, like hydroxychloroquine, had
medical experts up in arms on Twitter on Monday.
"Oleandrin? Yeah that would definitely end up killing
people," tweeted David Juurlink,
MD, PhD, of Sunnybrook
Health Sciences Center in Toronto.
Juurlink told MedPage Today that oleandrin is "akin to
digoxin. Too much can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea,
but the main concern is arrhythmias, which can be
fatal."
Jennifer Gunter, MD,
tweeted that it's
"easier to kill a person with oleandrin than
COVID-19" and highlighted a case report in which two people were poisoned after eating snails that had munched on an
oleander plant.
It's going to be a long, long road to November 3,
for many reasons. How the oleandrin story will go is anyone's
guess at this point, but there's definitely reason for concern.
As Jonathan Swan concludes in his piece in Axios:
Scientists around the world are in a
race for cures, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.
Government regulators are investigating hundreds of products.
When a biotech executive like Whitney can take his case
directly to the president, it casts doubt over the scientific
rigor of the drug development process.
Caveat emptor.
PS added 19 August, 2020:
On an interview aired on August 18, CNN's Anderson Cooper cornered the MyShillow guy re the
oleandrin frauduct, coming right out
and calling him a snake oil salesman. Nothing Lindell said
contradicted Cooper's assessment. Among other things, Lindell
flat-out lied that he has "no monetary gain here." Some
highlights from the interview:
Lindell:
Well, the 1,000 people are out there. I don't know if you
can't find it. But I'm not a medical doctor. I just know that
Ben Carson, who's on the task force, he brought it to the
President, going --
Cooper: OK. But, stop, sir. Ben Carson has
in the past been paid to promote supplements and got in
trouble for it in 2015. So he has a track record on that. You
are telling people that this cures Covid. You have no studies
to prove it. And you are saying 1,000 people were tested -- Lindell: You know what: I
got my own study. When I took the -- When I've seen the test
of 1,000 people that it was safe. That's all I needed.
Cooper: Sir, OK, if you've seen this test,
where is this test?
Lindell: I've been taking it since April.
I've been taking it since April. I have 100 friends and
family -- this thing works. It's the miracle of all time. Cooper: You said -- Sir,
you said you've seen this test, where is it?
Lindell: The tests are out there. The
thousand people -- phase one, phase two.
Cooper: Where is the test? Show it to us.
Lindell: I don't have the test.
Watch the video embedded at the beginning of
this post; if that link doesn't work, here's
a direct link.
