Founder of viral fundraiser for Trump's border wall has questionable news past
Brian Kolfage told NBC News he didn’t want to mention his previous projects because he “didn’t want it to be a distraction.”
Dec. 20, 2018 / 6:59 PM EST
By Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny
An internet fundraiser for Donald Trump’s border wall took in more than $7 million from over 131,000 donors by early Thursday evening.
The Florida man behind the GoFundMe page, a triple-amputee Iraq War veteran named Brian Kolfage, spent a large portion of the fundraising campaign’s description outlining his past, including a bolded section titled “How do you know this is not a scam?”
He implored users to look up his history, pointing donors to his verified Facebook page, and saying “I'm credible and a real person.”
The pitch has worked. One anonymous donor gave over $50,000 to the cause at 4 p.m. on Thursday. The GoFundMe trended on Twitter most of Thursday and received widespread media attention.
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The fundraising page doesn’t mention Kolfage’s most recent business venture, a Facebook page titled Right Wing News and a ring of affiliate sites that frequently trafficked in conspiracy theories. In October, Right Wing News was pulled down by Facebook in a sweep of more than 559 pages that the company said were “using fake accounts… to drive traffic to their websites” or “were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.”
Days after the pulldown, Kolfage created a group called Fight4FreeSpeech, which accepts donations, and is also not referenced in the GoFundMe.
Kolfage told NBC News he didn’t want to mention Right Wing News or Fight4FreeSpeech because he “didn’t want it to be a distraction.”
“I don’t wanna mix the two. That shouldn’t be the focus. My personal issues have nothing to do with building the wall,” he said.
more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/founder-viral-fundraiser-trump-s-border-wall-has-fake-news-n950636
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