NEW YORK — A judge has refused to move a trial from New York to Colorado for a businessman charged with teaming up with a former chief strategist for President Donald Trump in a southern border wall fundraising scam.
U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres turned down Timothy Shea's request on Monday.
Shea is charged along with ex-Trump strategist Steve Bannon and two others with raising $25 million for the “We Build The Wall” campaign.
Sheaa asked to move his trial to Colorado, saying a New York trial would be a burden since he has no ties to the city. The judge said moving his trial would force two trials since none of his co-defendants joined his request.
>the video above is from a prior report in August
According to an indictment unsealed in April of this year in New York, Bannon, Shea, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato siphoned money donated to the online "We Build The Wall" project -- which raised $25 million. Among the allegations is that the group transferred "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to Kolfage to support his "lavish lifestyle" and that the group concocted an elaborate scheme to cover up the payments.
Bannon, a longtime strategist of Trump, had publicly asserted that the online fundraising campaign was run by volunteers, according to a statement announcing the indictments issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
In reality, according to the statement, the four each "received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from We Build the Wall, which they each used in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations."
Federal prosecutors allege that Kolfage, a Purple Heart winner and triple amputee, "covertly took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds that donors had given to We Build the Wall," that Bannon, "through a non-profit organization under his control ('Non-Profit-1'), received over $1 million from We Build the Wall." At least some of that money was spent by Bannon on personal expenses, according to the statement.
According to the statement, the four then "devised a scheme to route those payments from We Build the Wall to Kolfage indirectly through Non-Profit-1 and a shell company under Shea’s control, among other avenues. They did so by using fake invoices and sham “vendor” arrangements, among other ways, to ensure, as Kolfage noted in a text message to Badolato, that his pay arrangement remained "confidential” and kept on a "need to know" basis.
All four were arrested in April and have since pleaded not guilty.
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