Steve Bannon leaving the federal courthouse in Manhattan yesterday. Andrew Kelly/Reuters
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Off the wall
Steve Bannon, once a Goldman Sachs M.&A. banker, struck gold by investing in “Seinfeld,” before a pivot to politics took him all the way to the White House, as an adviser to President Trump in the early days of his administration. A more recent venture has landed him in trouble: Mr. Bannon was arrested yesterday and charged with defrauding investors in We Build the Wall, a private fund-raising initiative to build a wall along the Mexican border. Mr. Bannon pleaded not guilty and was released on a $5 million bond.Who else was associated? We Build the Wall’s partners, directors and contractors include some noteworthy names. Three of Mr. Bannon’s business partners in the venture, who were also arrested, had a history of monetizing conservative causes:• Timothy Shea, who sold a Trump-themed energy drink.• Brian Kolfage, a Iraq War veteran who sold ads on pro-Trump websites he created.• Anthony Badolato, a self-described venture capitalist, whose entrepreneurial efforts included SinoFresh Healthcare, a nasal spray company he created with Mr. Bannon.We Build the Wall’s board members included:• Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, the private military company involved in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad. (The company has since renamed itself Academi.) Mr. Prince, brother of the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, now heads a private equity firm, Frontier Services Group. Frontier’s chairman is a powerful Chinese businessman, Chang Zhenming, a notable connection given Mr. Bannon’s strong anti-China rhetoric.• Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, who also worked on Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team.• Curt Schilling, the World Series-winning baseball pitcher.We Build the Wall’s contractor, Fisher Industries, confirmed to DealBook that it was retained for a 2019 project near El Paso, Texas. Its C.E.O., Tommy Fisher, pitched for private and government contracts tied to Mr. Trump’s wall-building efforts via frequent appearances on conservative news outlets. A Fisher company signed a $400 million deal in December, and the Pentagon’s inspector general began a review of the agreement shortly thereafter.Mr. Bannon was arrested on a yacht owned by a fugitive Chinese billionaire. The 150-foot yacht was off Westbrook, Conn., when boarded by law enforcement officials. It is owned by Guo Wengui, who is sought by Beijing for extradition from the U.S. Mr. Bannon and Mr. Guo worked together on GTV Media, which is reportedly under investigation over a $300 million private fund-raising round earlier this year.____________________________
Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New Jersey, Lauren Hirsch in New York, and Michael J. de la Merced and Jason Karaian in London.
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| Here’s what’s happening |
| Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will testify before Congress today. He is expected to defend his three-month tenure to House Democrats worried that changes to the Postal Service will impede voting by mail. The Washington Post reports that Mr. DeJoy is planning an even more sweeping overhaul after the November elections. |
| Uber and Lyft dodged a bullet in California. A state appeals court gave the ride-hailing companies a reprieve from a Thursday deadline to reclassify their drivers as employees. The companies, which had threatened to suspend ride-hailing operations in the state, will now argue their case before the appeals court in October. |
| A federal judge said that President Trump must turn over his tax returns. Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York rejected the president’s effort to block the Manhattan district attorney from obtaining his financial information. The dispute could go to the Supreme Court (again). |
| Mark Zuckerberg was questioned under oath in a federal antitrust investigation. The Facebook chief sat for multiple days of interviews with the F.T.C. as it examines whether the company broke competition laws. It’s the first known time that regulators have questioned the C.E.O. of a tech giant on antitrust issues. |
| Fewer than a quarter of states have been approved for supplemental unemployment benefits. As the latest data on jobless claims showed an unexpected rise, the proposal for a $300 weekly supplement — replacing, in part, a $600-per-week program that expired in July — is off to a slow start. States are seeking technical guidance, with some worrying that what’s meant as a stopgap plan will be unworkable in the short term. |
| The fight over Joe Biden’s economic policy has begun |
| The former vice president accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last night, pledging, among other things, to get the economy back on track. But Democrats disagree over what that would look like. |
| Mr. Biden emphasized a number of economic priorities in his speech, including rebuilding American manufacturing, preserving Obamacare, introducing universal child care, reviving labor unions, raising wages and investing in green energy. |
| He pledged to pay for it all by taxing the rich. “We can pay for these investments by ending loopholes and the president’s $1.3 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent and the biggest, most profitable corporations, some of which pay no tax at all,” he said. “Because we don’t need a tax code that rewards wealth more than it rewards work.” (An op-ed in Fast Company argues that big businesses would have to work harder to prove their do-gooder bona fides if Mr. Biden became president.) |
| There’s disagreement over how daring Mr. Biden should be: |
| • Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser who replaced Mr. Biden in the Senate and now leads his transition team, told The Wall Street Journal this week that a Biden administration wouldn’t push for big spending initiatives next year. “When we get in, the pantry is going to be bare,” Mr. Kaufman said. |
| • Progressive Democrats argue that fiscal conservatism is wrongheaded given the economic devastation caused by the pandemic. “We need massive investment in our country or it will fall apart,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted yesterday. “To adopt GOP deficit-hawking now, when millions of lives are at stake, is utterly irresponsible.” |