Update on Veteran Brian Kolf*ge raising millions on GoFundMe for Trump's border wall
Donors have given Brian Kolf*ge, the wounded veteran behind the v***l GoFundMe "Trump Wall" campaign, permission to t***sfer at least $7 million to his new plan to privately fund and build a southern border wall, according to Kolf*ge and another source familiar with the effort. President Trump has asked Congress for more than $5 billion to build the same project, but Kolf*ge says he can do it for half the cost.
Kolf*ge first launched the "Trump Wall" campaign in December, and $20 million was pledged from more than 300,000 people. His original goal was to raise $1 billion and hand over the money to the federal government to subsidize the cost of the wall.
But last Friday, Kolf*ge changed course and announced that funds would instead go toward his new non-profit, We Build the Wall, Inc., which he said would use contributions to build a wall on private land. In a GoFundMe post, Kolf*ge wrote that the "federal government won't be able to accept our donations anytime soon."
Because of the change and the fact that the initial campaign fell short of the fundraising goal, GoFundMe said donors would automatically get their money back unless they actively opted to roll over their donation to Kolf*ge's new venture.
Kolf*ge and the source close to the campaign claimed that $7 million had been redirected to We Build the Wall, Inc. Kolf*ge said more than 120,000 donors have chosen this option, a number GoFundMe did not confirm. After initially offering the $7 million figure Tuesday morning, Kolf*ge later said it was a "guess."
"Our donors gave to us to get the job done, and they trust us to do so," Kolf*ge said in an email to CBS News.
When asked specifically how the money would be spent, Kolf*ge declined to give specifics and pointed to his recently revised GoFundMe page, which says the the money will "go toward wall construction only." GoFundMe did not respond to whether the funds had been released to Kolf*ge yet.
What happens to the remaining $13 million that had been pledged? Donors who take no action will receive refunds by April 11. Those who ask for their money back should get it within 3 business days; more than 8,300 people have asked for that option, according to Kolf*ge. As GoFundMe processes those refunds, it will update the amount raised — on Wednesday, the page still said more than $20 million had been raised.
Last Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that Kolf*ge had misused funds from a previous GoFundMe campaign intended to help other wounded soldiers. Kolf*ge had raised $16,246 for a veteran mentorship initiative, but BuzzFeed News reported that it had no evidence that Kolf*ge had used the money for the program: none of the partners he claimed to have worked with — including Walter Reed, Brooke Army Medical Center and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany — have any records that Kolf*ge worked with their patients or donated money, according to representatives at the centers that BuzzFeed News spoke to.In an email to CBS News, Kolf*ge disputed the BuzzFeed report, claiming that he used the funds to travel to the hospitals where he conducted his mentorship program. He called the piece a "f**e article."
"The money was raised for my mentor program," Kolf*ge wrote in an email to CBS News on Tuesday."The money wasn't raised for a hospital or another charity it was raised for me to travel for my award winning mentor trips to visit wounded veterans."
On his GoFundMe page, Kolf*ge also provided an address for donors to send checks in case they weren't comfortable with online t***sactions. According to Kolf*ge, he's received 3,500 mail-in donations, but he said he hasn't totaled them yet.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/gofundme-trump-wall-donors-have-given-dollar7-million-to-organizers-new-idea/ar-BBSl0LJ?oci