On August 20, it was announced that former White House chief strategist and CEO of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign Steve Bannon had been arrested. Bannon along with We Build the Wall frontman Brian Kolfage, possible career criminal Andrew Badolato, and real estate broker Timothy Shea, were indicted on charges that they were using the non-profit wall fundraising machine as a money laundering scheme.
One of the people not indicted, but seemingly financially connected to the We Build the Wall scam is Jason Miller. If you don’t remember Jason Miller, he was the goatee wearing sketchball that resigned two days after being named by Trump as his White House communications director. His resignation came with stories of an extramarital affair with another Trump campaign operative A.J. Delgado, and general scumbaggery. Salon reports that recently rehired Senior Trump campaign official Jason Miller seems to have been receiving about $20,000 per month to do a “podcacst” and “radio” appearances for Steve Bannon’s nonprofit Citizens of the American Republic (COAR). This is problematic because prosecutors may be looking at COAR as a part of the money laundering operation Bannon and others have been indicted for.
As Salon explains, while the nonprofit has not been named, Bannon’s COAR fits the description in the prosecution’s documents filings for “Non-Profit-1.” The money that Miller has been receiving from COAR is different than the possibly hidden money Miller has been receiving from the Trump campaign—according to FEC records obtained by Salon and publicly available court documents—which amounts to another $35,000 a month.
Miller has been distancing himself from Bannon and friends, telling Chuck Todd in an interview that “These allegations are very serious, and I hope that Steve [Bannon] has some good answers for the things that he's been accused of. It's not something that I worked on. I don't know anything about the financial dealings of this organization or how it worked. And I hope Steve has the opportunity to tell his side of the story.”
Miller’s years in the national spotlight has been marked by scandal and failing upward. After resigning from his White House position, CNN tapped him to become a political commentator for the news network. That relationship came to an end after court records—from an ongoing custody battle between Delgado and Miller—obtained by the news outlet The Splinter alleged that Miller had also had another extramarital affair. However, this other affair also came with the very disturbing allegations that Miller secretly “dosed” the woman with an abortion pill once he found out she was pregnant.
At the same time, Miller got a job as the managing director at corporate advisory firm Teneo. After a particularly vociferous public attack against Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, Miller left his position at Teneo, “by mutual consent.” But you don’t fall far when the corrupt are in power, and in June the Trump campaign rehired Miller as a senior adviser. Only the best people.
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