Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee Iraq War veteran responsible for the GoFundMe page that raised more than $7 million for Donald Trump's border wall (as of Thursday evening), has a reported history with questionable news sites.
Kolfage set up the GoFundMe page out of frustration that the Congress has so far failed to commit funds to building the wall. "We're not getting just people who voted for Trump now," Kolfage told Fox Business. "I'm getting messages from many Democrats who say they support this wall."
If everyone who voted for Trump would contribute $80, Kolfage has claimed, the wall could be paid for.
It’s a movement, we are changing course of political history by not sitting and doing nothing... talk is cheap. Put your money where your mouth is. #GoFundTheWall https://t.co/NMPftwYnZL
— Brian Kolfage (@BrianKolfage) December 21, 2018
Kolfage did not disavow his relationships with controversial websites but didn't raise the subject of them because, he told NBC News they could be a "distraction" from his goal of raising money for the border wall.
According to NBC News' Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, Kolfage was recently involved with a Facebook page titled Right Wing News. He also may have ties to sites that frequently posted conspiracy theories. In October, Right Wing News was taken off of Facebook as the website scrubbed more than 559 pages that were considered to be "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."
Kolfage also ran websites that have since been shut down including VeteranAF and FreedomDaily, which included several false conspiracy theories regarding Trump's 2016 presidential opponent Hillary Clinton, as well as false stories of voter fraud in the days leading up to the 2016 election. One headline on a Kolfage-associated site, according to NBC News: "Obnoxious Black People Lose Their Minds When Victoria Secret Models Say This 1 Word On Live Video."
Kolfage told NBC News that he has connections in the White House that can make sure all of his GoFundMe donations will directly fund the border wall, saying "we have a lot of people watching this," which would "serve as a motivating factor not to screw this up."
12/21, 11:30 a.m.: This story has been updated to include additional information; the original version did not meet our editorial standards.
