No Liberal Tears: We Build the Wall's Colorado Conspirator Finally Sentenced

After several postponements, Castle Rock businessman Timothy Shea was finally sentenced on July 25 for his role with "We Build the Wall," a fundraiser designed to subsidize constructing a wall along the southern border of the United States. Much of the $25 million donated by hundreds of thousands of people across the country actually went into the pockets of Shea and others involved.

One was Steve Bannon; two others, Andrew Badolato and triple-amputee vet Brian Kolfage, the poster boy for the project, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy last year. In Federal District Court in Manhattan on April 26, Badolato, who ran the operation with Bannon, was sentenced to three years in prison. Kolfage, the public face, was sentenced to four years and three months. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres said their crimes had a “chilling effect on civic participation” in politics.

Shea's sentencing was moved to June, then to July.

Shea runs a drink company called Winning Energy. Cans of the beverages feature a cartoon superhero image of Donald Trump, and the company's website claims that the contents are made from "liberal tears, creating the perfect energy drinks for winners."

But who's crying now?

Judge Torres sentenced Shea to more than five years in prison, noting that he'd kept at least $180,000 of the money donated to We Build the Wall for himself. Prosecutors had claimed he viewed the campaign as a "personal piggybank."

Florida-based Kolfage had started a GoFundMe campaign in December 2018
during a government shutdown sparked by Congress's refusal to approve funds that Trump had requested to build a new border wall; donations were initially directed to a post office box in Castle Rock. At the time, Amanda Shea, a friend of Kolfage's, told 9News that she and her husband, Tim, helped create the GoFundMe with Kolfage and volunteered to handle collections because it was easier for them to get to the post office.

But the Colorado address and other issues raised enough questions that Kolfage subsequently registered the group as a nonprofit, "volunteer" organization, bringing Bannon and others on board and ultimately raising more than $25 million.

Kolfage and Bannon had promised that "100% of the funds raised...will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose," but according to the indictment issued in August 2020, Bannon, through a nonprofit under his control, used more than $1 million from We Build the Wall to "secretly" pay Kolfage and cover hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own expenses. The other partners took more.

Initially, Shea's attorney, John Meringolo, had asked for a change of venue for his client, noting that Shea had only visited New York City as a child to see a baseball game. Shea needed to be near Winning Energy's headquarters, his filing said: "A start-up company in its infancy will undoubtedly be disrupted if a trial were to take place in New York." The judge disagreed, and his case stayed in New York.

Shea went on trial last spring, but that ended in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked and one juror accused the others of being politically biased, saying the trial should have been held in the South. In October, a second jury took six hours to find Shea guilty of two counts of conspiracy and one of obstruction of justice.

Shea's original sentencing was set for January 31, 2023...a day when there are no baseball games in New York City. But Meringolo, an adjunct professor at Pace University, passed away in November, and Shea's new attorney was unavailable on that date. As a result, the government had asked that Shea's sentencing date be moved to March 1. But that date, too, was postponed, to April 26, when it was postponed again to June 13, and then again to July 25, when Shea was finally sentenced to 63 months in prison, starting October 1.

He regrets “all the of the We Build The Wall stuff," Shea told the judge. "“I wish I hadn’t been involved in any of that.”

There's another Colorado connection to this case. Former congressman Tom Tancredo was on the We Build the Wall advisory board. Tancredo took a few organization-funded fact-finding missions to the border (Amanda Shea made the travel arrangements) and saw a one-mile portion of the wall that had actually been built by the group, but said he never received any other compensation. “The border patrol says it’s the best barrier on the border,” Tancredo said of that one mile. “I am absolutely proud of it. I’m almost hoarse from talking about it on the radio.”

While Bannon received a federal pardon from then-President Donald Trump, that does not protect him from New York State's legal system; he, too, has been charged in connection with the We Build the Wall scam. Last fall, Bannon pleaded not guilty; he is currently set to go on trial next May on money laundering, fraud and conspiracy charges.

Update: This story has been updated to include Shea's sentencing details.