'It was all a scam': Anti-Trump group to debut new ad featuring Bannon's arrest on Fox News during RNC

In a 30-second advert to air on Fox News during the 2020 Republican National Convention, a conservative political group opposed to Donald Trump's re-election has targeted former White House adviser Steve Bannon's arrest on fraud charges related to a US-Mexico border wall scheme.

"The Border Wall Scam" from Republican Voters Against Trump depicts how "Trump's friends and advisors took advantage of his base's support for a border wall only to create a culture of anger and hate throughout the country and defraud their own supporters," the organisation said in a statement.

A voice speaks over news clips from the arrest and charges against Mr Bannon, who had pleaded not guilty to wire fraud and money laundering on Thursday after his early morning arrest. Mr Bannon and three other men are accused of defrauding donors who contributed to a privately funded border wall project that raised $25m.

It also cuts together footage from law enforcement firing tear gas into crowds out of protesters outside the White House.

"The Trump posse didn't care about the forgotten man," a narrator says in the ad. "They didn't care about building a wall. They didn't want to drain the swamp. They just wanted power, by making you angry and robbing you blind. The truth: It was all a scam."

Republican Voters Against Trump's ad is set to air on Fox & Friends on Thursday and will appear during other time slots during the week, a spokesperson told The Independent.

Mr Trump is set to speak during every day of the week-long GOP conference, culminating in the party's renomination to face against the former vice president in November elections.

The organisation, which launched earlier this year under conservative political group Defending Democracy Together, also ran ads featuring former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, the first former senior-level Trump official to endorse the president's rival Joe Biden.

Republican Voters Against Trump also assembled a statement from 73 former national security officials who worked across four Republican administrations to produce a 10-point indictment against the president, labelled "dangerously unfit" to serve and has "imperilled" national security and US relations abroad.

The statement was released on the final day of the Democrats' nominating convention, which has notably featured several Republican officials and voters voicing their support for the former vice president, including former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Ohio governor John Kasich, and Cindy McCain, the widow of longtime senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

"While some of us hold policy positions that differ from those of Joe Biden and his party, the time to debate those policy differences will come later," the former officials said in a statement. "For now, it is imperative that we stop Trump's assault on our nation's values and institutions and reinstate the moral foundations of our democracy."

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