Trump is trying to distance himself from the private wall builders. His officials and family publicly supported it.
President Trump's claims of ignorance to the private border wall could not be further from the truth.
On Thursday, four organizers of a campaign to build a private border wall were arrested on fraud charges for allegedly rerouting crowdfunded dollars to their own pockets. Trump has since pulled out a familiar line and claimed he knew nothing about the project or the people working on it, even though that's incredibly and obviously false.
For starters, Stephen Bannon, who is accused of taking more than $1 million to fund his "lavish" lifestyle, was literally Trump's chief strategist for his first few months in the White House. Timothy Shea was also arrested Thursday, and a year ago, his wife tweeted that she had met with Trump to discuss the project, HuffPost reports.
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Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. has been a very public supporter of the project, calling it "private enterprise at its finest." A $75 donation to We Build the Wall would once secure you a signed copy of Trump Jr.'s book that just came out this year, and the group boasted that its foreman met with Trump Jr. once. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization claimed Trump Jr. didn't know he was quoted on We Build the Wall's website, and that he only spoke on their behalf once.
But it's not just Trump's family that supported We Build the Wall. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf recently visited its build site and met with board members, HuffPost notes. The former head of Trump's voter fraud commission Kris Kobach served on We Build the Wall's board, and once said Trump approved of it.
These are just a small handful of the ways We Build the Wall has tied itself to Trump in an attempt to prove its legitimacy. Read more about the campaign's Trump connections at HuffPost.
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