Brian Kolfage/GoFundMe
The man who has raised over $9 million for Trump’s border wall on GoFundMe previously ran a network of fake news websites, NBC News reports. Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee Iraq War veteran who made the fundraising page, reportedly fails to mention his history of running a Facebook page called Right Wing News on the GoFundMe. Right Wing News reportedly had a “ring of affiliate sites” which frequently posted conspiracy theories during the 2016 election. The site was taken down by Facebook earlier this year for “using fake accounts… to drive traffic to their websites” and being “ad farms” disguised as forums for political debate, according to NBC. After the page and websites were taken down, Kolfage reportedly created another fundraiser called Fight4FreeSpeech—which also is not mentioned on the border wall GoFundMe. Kolfage told NBC News he didn’t mention his previous pages or fundraisers because he “didn’t want it to be a distraction.” “I don’t wanna mix the two. That shouldn’t be the focus,” he said. “My personal issues have nothing to do with building the wall.” Kolfage also claimed he knew someone in the White House’s “inner-circle,” and pledged that the cause was legitimately for the wall. “We can work on a way where we can guarantee with a contract where [the funding] can only go to the wall,” he said.