Vox Sentences - Signed, sealed, delivered (to justice)

Steve Bannon is arrested on fraud charges; a prominent Putin critic is hospitalized in a suspected poisoning.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Cameron Peters.

• On Thursday morning, former White House chief strategist and Trump adviser Steve Bannon was arrested on fraud charges brought by the Southern District of New York. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]
• Bannon was taken into custody on a $28 million megayacht by federal agents with the US Postal Inspection Service, an FBI-like unit that investigates mail fraud and other crimes. [Vox / Nicole Narea]
• Three other men — Andrew Badolato, Timothy Shea, and Brian Kolfage — were also arrested in connection with the case, a GoFundMe scheme to crowdfund the construction of a wall on the southern border. [NPR / Barbara Sprunt]
• The GoFundMe raised $25 million for the effort, but Bannon and his confederates reportedly funneled more than $1 million of that money into their own pockets. [NYT / Alan Feuer and William K. Rashbaum]
• The fundraiser first got its start with Kolfage, a veteran and a triple amputee. According to an NBC story from early last year, Kolfage frequently used GoFundMe, among other tools, as a way to harvest email addresses. [NBC News / Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins]
• Kolfage had pledged that “100 percent” of the money raised would go toward building a wall, but the indictment indicates that he personally spent $350,000 in donor money on a boat and a golf cart, among other things. [Washington Post / Matt Zapotosky]
• The group did manage to build a three-mile stretch of wall, according to a report by ProPublica. However, slipshod construction means that the fence is in danger of falling into the Rio Grande River. [ProPublica / Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo]
• On Thursday, Trump disavowed the group and his former adviser, telling reporters that “I don't like that project — I thought it was being done for showboating reasons.” [Politico / Josh Gerstein]
• But Donald Trump Jr. endorsed the project in 2018, and there’s quite a bit of overlap between Trumpworld and the We Build the Wall group — not only was Bannon involved, but so was Trump-endorsed 2018 Kansas gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach, among others. [Twitter / Andrew Kaczynski]