Curt Schilling was uncharacteristically quiet about the subject of a border wall through the fall of 2018.
On October 18, he posted a link on Twitter to a Breitbart story about Nancy Pelosi saying Democrats wouldn’t vote to fund a border wall with Mexico. “news flash!” Schilling added in his comment, “We don’t need your votes.”
Then, it was silence about the topic for two months, until December 18, when Schilling tweeted, simply, the title of a GoFundMe page and the link to it: “We The People Will Fund The Wall”
That GoFundMe was the project of Brian Kolfage, who a few hours later also tweeted a link to “The Trump Wall,” tagging Schilling along with such leading lights of conservative numbskullery as Donald Trump Jr. and Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz.
That meant Schilling also was tagged in replies to the Tweet, and he decided to get in on the action on one of those, telling a wall supporter dubious of this campaign, “Watch what happens. When this legitimizes, some conservative billionaire will jump in and make some huge donation. I’s need dotted and T’s crossed to insure this goes where it’s supposed to.”
Kolfage then replied, “You da man curt… I’m trying to get the media on this. So far 350k raised on just Facebook and tweets. We need media!”
The next day, Schilling speculated to Kolfage on Twitter that the president himself might “put some sort of matching or x3 donation thing together with our Congress,” and then assured him, “I just put out a few texts to friends in the media to take a peek at the page.”
Schilling knows something about wasting fortunes, as he lost his entire $115 million in career earnings on a videogame company.
In January of last year, Kolfage complained in another tweet, “It’s really pathetic that (Brianna Sacks) with @Buzzfeed is so desperate to derail our perfect plan to build the wall that she’s reporting absolute LIES to trick Americans into NOT opting back into the fund. Why is she so insistent to make so many slanderous allegations against me?”
Schilling responded: “She works for @BuzzFeed, that in and of itself makes her as qualified as pretty much no one to give the people the truth. Spineless cowards and hacks, all.”
And on June 9, 2019, Schilling gave his buddy an unsolicited boost, tweeting, “I swear I have laughed out loud at every liberal that tweeted ‘liar’ ‘scam’ ‘you’ll never build it’ and the Twitter lawyers who know it all. Everyone has been wrong about collusion, obstruction, tariffs, the wall and everything else but they keep doubling down.”
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York does have a social media presence, so the “Twitter lawyer” crack is technically correct, and in this case, that is the best kind of correct, indeed. That “Twitter lawyer” charged Kolfage, along with Derek Bell-style pirate Steve Bannon (seriously, he was arrested on a boat), Andrew Batdolato, and Timothy Shea with defrauding “hundreds of thousands of donors” to enrich Kolfage with the proceeds of the GoFundMe.
Schilling was on the advisory board for Build The Wall PAC, and in February of last year, he was yammering about claims building from the right that something seemed amiss about the project.
“Harvey Staub,” an account with “#MAGA #KAG #Trump2020” in its bio, tweeted, “@BrianKolfage knows how to play everyone for fools” on February 1, in a thread in which Schilling was tagged.
User @MelRae72 replied, above a picture of Trump with “The Wall Is Coming” in the Game of Thrones font, “My money is building that wall and I trust Brian and his amazing team! They are amazing patriots and I couldn’t thank Brian more for his service in all aspects to this country! Ty @BrianKolfage you are a true hero! Bitch and moan all you want, but the patriots have got this!”
Staub fired back, “In what surreal world do you live?”
And that’s when Schilling got involved, saying, “The real one. The walls getting built and the fact that you don’t like that is only concerning to you it appears. The number of things happening daily and the litany of people who are in on this is enough to comfort me that it will get done.”
A “litany of people in on this,” eh? Do tell, Schill.
Unfortunately, when Staub said the wall getting built “by our Great President” in fact “has nothing to do with you nor your grifter crowd of has been coattailers,” Schilling had no reply. Maybe he got ketchup on his keyboard, he’s been known to spill it from time to time.
This being an open legal matter, it’s up to the “Twitter lawyers” at the U.S. Attorney’s Office to figure out how much Schilling knew about any fraud being perpetrated, but it’s worth noting that it was brought up to him in February 2019, by a fellow traveler in wall enthusiasm, that the GoFundMe project seemed fishy, and four months later, Schilling still was proclaiming how he “laughed out loud” at the doubters.
A lot more people are laughing a lot louder today.