French magazine Le Point said that mixing with US President Donald Trump does not bring good luck, noting that Steve Bannon, his former advisor and engineer of his success in 2016, is now accused of fraud, and he is the seventh in the vicinity of the president who faces a serious problem with justice.
In a report from its Washington correspondent Helen Fessier, the magazine said Bannon was arrested on board the luxury yacht of Chinese billionaire Gu Wongi, who fled China in 2014 on charges of corruption and rape.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, a far-right website undergoing a federal investigation into its business ties to the Chinese billionaire, is not the only suspect in fraud cases, as there are other suspicious figures still circling the White House.
Steal money from the wall
The reporter stated that Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort was sentenced in 2018 to more than 7 years in prison for committing multiple crimes, including bank and tax fraud and money laundering, and a Senate report this week also revealed that he had ties to a Russian agent during the campaign.
Manafort accepted - as the reporter says - his right-hand man Rick Gates was convicted, and Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor, George Papadopoulos, his foreign policy advisor, and Roger Stone, his old friend, were sentenced to prison for their ties to Moscow in connection with the Russian interference in the presidential campaign.
Finally, Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for secretly paying money during the campaign to two women who claimed they had sex with Trump.
As for Steve Bannon, 66, who is no longer important to the president after his expulsion from the White House in 2017, he is accused, along with 3 others, of creating the "We Build the Wall" page on the GoFundMe website. Which was launched to finance the construction of parts of the famous wall dear to Trump's heart on the Mexican border.
The operation was a great success, and the four men collected 25 million dollars, but they stole a lot of it, as Bannon - according to the federal prosecutor in Manhattan - was getting one million dollars for "personal expenses," and Brian Colvag, the founder of the site, was accused of embezzling 350,000 Dollars to finance a boat, golf cart and plastic surgery treatments.
The reporter said Bannon pleaded not guilty to the two charges against him, which are fraud and money laundering, both of which carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, and he was released on $ 5 million bail.
Fake university
Donald Trump initially tried to distance himself from the subject - according to the correspondence - by confirming that he did not know anything about the wall financing project, but he contradicted himself by saying that he did not like it.
The correspondent mentioned that the president himself is facing several judicial investigations into his financial affairs and taxes, noting that he was forced to pay a fine of two million dollars and dissolve his charitable foundation that used donations to finance the campaign expenses, and he was also forced to pay 25 million dollars in compensation to students of the university founded by "Trump University." Angered by the bad teaching therein.
Former Michigan Attorney General Barbara McWady said that Trump showed an exceptional miscalculation in choosing his partners, noting that Bannon's arrest on fraud charges should cause concern among many close to the president, and even Trump himself.
The correspondent warned that most of the six convicted individuals have so far preferred not to cooperate with the investigators in the hope of benefiting from a presidential pardon, but Bannon in particular, if Trump loses the elections, may decide to cooperate in exchange for the amnesty, because he has a lot of interesting information regarding justice.