OLATHE — Former Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Wednesday night that his continued involvement with the embattled We Build the Wall group was to help conduct an “orderly shutdown” of its activities.
His remarks come as Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, is facing new charges that will largely mirror federal counts alleging he defrauded donors to the group, which was purportedly formed to construct segments of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Bannon was pardoned by Trump after pleading not guilty to the charges in 2020, but turned himself in on fraud and conspiracy charges in New York on Thursday.
Kobach said he wasn’t expecting to encounter any legal difficulties stemming from the matter and said he provided emails and text messages associated with the group to investigators.
“The allegations are about transactions that occurred before I was involved,” he told reporters after a Kansas Chamber forum in Olathe.
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Kris Kobach has been We Build The Wall group’s general counsel
Kobach has worked as the group’s general counsel and said his continued involvement was to provide legal counsel as the group attempts to wind down its efforts.
“Now you have to do an orderly shutdown of a corporation,” he said. “And there has to be some attorneys involved to actually make it happen.”
The issue, he added, hasn’t come up during his campaign for attorney general. Kobach defeated two Republican adversaries to win the party’s nomination for the office last month.
Kelli Kee, a spokesperson for Kobach’s Democratic opponent, Chris Mann, said the organization should have been suspended previously.
“It’s long past time they shut it down and refund the money to donors,” Kee said in an email. “Kansans need an attorney general like Chris Mann who will protect them from fraud, not a politician who takes part in these scams.”
The group owed Kobach tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid legal fees, funds he has been unsuccessful in recouping via accessing the organization’s funds, currently frozen by federal officials.
Kobach said he is friendly with Bannon and has appeared on his radio show multiple times. He also continued to defend the work of We Build the Wall.
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Kansas AG candidate says Steve Bannon took ‘constitutional stand’
Bannon was found guilty in July of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, though he has yet to be sentenced in the matter.
But Kobach said the issue remains a “purely political prosecution” and that Bannon shouldn’t have been forced to testify on advice he gave to Trump.
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“So this wasn’t like a garden variety criminal conviction,” he said. “This was him taking a constitutional stand with which the current leadership of Congress disagrees.”
Andrew Bahl is a senior statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 443-979-6100.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism