According to GoFUndMe spokesperson Bobby Whithorne, the border wall online campaign's founder promised donors that all donations would go toward building the wall along the southern border proposed by US President Donald Trump — if the campaign met its $1 billion target, cited by the Insider.
The campaign barely managed to break 2 percent of its goal, however, bringing in less than $20 million, and the amount will be refunded to donors upon request.
"As a veteran who has given so much, three limbs, I feel deeply invested to this nation to ensure future generations have everything we have today," Kolfage, an Iraq War veteran, said in a December 2018 statement announcing the online donation regime.
"President Trump's main campaign promise was to BUILD THE WALL," Kolfage asserted, adding, "this wall project needs to be completed still," cited by Fortune magazine
In a Friday update on the GoFundMe campaign page, Kolfage wrote that his team spent "countless hours over the holidays reviewing all issues pertaining to the construction of a southern border wall."
"Unanimously," he declared of his advisors at the time, "we have come to the conclusion that […] we are better equipped than our own government to use the donated funds to build an actual wall on the southern border."
Following low interest in his now-failed plan, however, the new GoFundMe update adds that donations will be "promptly refunded" to donors.
Currently, nine of 15 federal departments, as well as dozens of other agencies and federal programs, have closed or decreased services because the president has refused to sign a $5.6 billion budget bill that does not include spending for his wall — a key campaign promise.
In addition, some 800,000 federal employees have been on furlough or are being forced to continue working without pay, costing the US economy an estimated several billion dollars, Sputnik previously reported.