By FOIA Research
on February 2, 2019 - Last updated: August 13, 2023

Steve Bannon

By FOIA Research on Sat, 02/02/2019 - 13:46

(This article follows Steve Bannon's activities from his 2016 stint in the White House until today; a short intro to Bannon's earlier career can be found here.)

2016

On August 17, 2016, Donald Trump, then still a candidate in the hot phase of the presidential election, announced Steve Bannon as his campaign chief executive. The same day, Bannon went on a temporary leave from his post as Breitbart News executive chairman, the Mercer-funded far-right news site and fledgling MAGA mouthpiece.1

Several Breitbart "journalists," among them Dustin Stockton, Jennifer Lawrence, and Patrick Howley, left together with Bannon, and went on to work for other MAGA outfits, such as America First Projects,2 a Trumpian PAC, created in early 2017,3 and its media arm,4 Big League Politics,5 backfeeding lies and conspiracies haunting the Trumpian echo chamber.

Following Trump's election victory in November 2016, Bannon became chief presidential adviser, a position especially carved out for him. According to the Anti-Defamation League6 :

When President Trump named Bannon as his chief strategist, numerous well-known white supremacists celebrated the appointment. David Duke called the selection of Bannon “excellent,” adding that Bannon was “basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going.” 

Bannon's personal financial disclosure statement, which he had to submit upon assuming the post as chief presidential adviser, showed that he was "paid more than $544,000 by Breitbart and Mercer-funded entities Cambridge Analytica, Glittering Steel, and the Government Accountability Institute" that year, according to a Daily Beast article.7

Steve Bannon's financial disclosure report to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics from November 13, 2016. Source: Politico.

Steve Bannon's financial disclosure report to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics from January 20, 2017. Source: Alt Gov 2.

2017

After his dismissal as Trump’s chief advisor in August 2017, in December of that year Bannon worked shortly (ca. one month) for the radio station SiriusXM, but a protest wave of listeners and employees of the station forced him to leave.8 There is a picture on which far-right grifter Ali Alexander can be seen together with Bannon, presumably during his stint at SiriusXM.

On August 18, 2017, Breitbart announced that Bannon would return as executive chairman following his period of employment at the White House.9 However, on January 9, 2018, he stepped down as executive chairman after his controversial statements about Trump family members quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.10

2018

After his dismissal as Trump’s advisor and his final leave from Breitbart, it appears that Bannon had burned many bridges in his orbit. It may be for that reason that Bannon embarked in March 2018 on a trip through Europe, meeting prominent far-right politicians, influencers and financiers, which resulted in the plan to form a right-wing populist “supergroup” called "The Movement" within the European parliament, as he revealed in July 2018. Another reason could be that his objective of shifting US politics to the right has succeeded, and now he simply moved on to challenging his next tactical target on the far-right battle map, the European Union.

Recalling the multiple links of enterprises involving Bannon with electoral fraud and gerrymandering, particularly in connection with the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit campaign, it can be established that his project of European disintegration has already begun.11 Pre-eminent amongst those enterprises, the mouthpiece of the alt-right, Breitbart News, co-founded by Bannon in 2007 with the help of billionaire Robert Mercer, which can be considered the heart of the international “alt-right news and information ecosystem”.12 Breitbart had not only served as propaganda machine for Trump’s election campaign, but had also played a decisive role in the Brexit referendum, pushed for by UKIP under Nigel Farage, with whom Bannon has long-standing ties. “Farage has often praised Breitbart for its support of Brexit, saying the 23 June [2017] referendum would not have gone in favour of the leave campaign without the news website’s ‘supportive voice’”. Breitbart seems to even have payed senior “volunteers” inside UKIP before the EU referendum, as subsequent complaints by whistleblowers have revealed.13

Another brainchild of Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon, the scandal-ridden political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica specialized in data mining, data analyses, and data brokerage, has become subject of ongoing criminal investigations in the UK and the US.11 Founded in 2013 as an offshoot of the SCL Group, Cambridge Analytica had been working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign as well as for Leave.EU, rallying for a “hard” Brexit. This engagement entailed the  inappropriate acquisition of the personal information of up to 87 Million Facebook users.14 The data gathered was predominately used for developing a system of personality profiling, which would enable the targeted distribution of ads for particular audiences, so-called “Dark Ads”. Dark ads have been deployed in the course of both, the Trump and the Brexit campaign. For example, various Brexit supporters, such as Vote Leave, 50 Million, BrexitCentral / BeLeave, and DUP Vote to Leave, had commissioned the Canadian software company AggregateIQ (AIQ) to publish targeted ads on Facebook before the UK referendum.15 12 Next to illegal data mining and profiling activities, Cambridge Analytica has been also accused of having used dirty methods such as “bribery stings, honey traps and spying” in order to influence the election results in Trump's favor.16

In the course of the ongoing investigation by the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Britain's data protection authority, suspicions have also been raised of a possible Russian interference with Cambridge Analytica. In July 2018 it was confirmed that “some of the systems linked to the investigation were accessed from IP addresses that resolve to Russia and other areas of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States]".17 Cambridge psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan of Moldavian origin, responsible for collecting the Facebook data set and and selling it to Cambridge Analytica's parent company SCL Group, denies any collaboration with Russian entities.18 A possible consequence of this leaking of information could have been that the unknown eavesdroppers “learned from Cambridge Analytica, and used that knowledge to run ads in America during the presidential election as well,” and certainly for other purposes.17

After his dismissal from the White house, Bannon started to intensify his European contacts, and traveled to Italy in March 2018. There, he set up his “de facto headquarters” just four days prior to the Italian general election on March 4, 2018.19 Although he declined to name the persons he had met in Italy, he described them “as a broad array of politicians, operatives and investors.”20 Subsequently the Italian press found out that on March 8, he had partaken in a meeting with i.a. deputy prime minister and interior minister of Italy, Matteo Salvini, and Marcello Foa, newly appointed president of the state broadcasting company RAI.21 According to La Repubblica, Foa has close relations to Swiss billionaire Tito Tettamanti, founder of the Fidinam group, specialized in international tax consulting, and the creation of offshore structures. Two days before the meeting with Salvini, Bannon and Tettamenti had lunch together in Lugano, Switzerland. Funding could have certainly been an objective of the meeting.22

On March 6, 2018, the same day Bannon had met Tettamenti in Lugano, he gave a lecture in Zurich at an event organized by the weekly newspaper “Weltwoche” about "the populist revolts and their global consequences for Switzerland, Europe and America.”23 24 He spoke praisingly of Switzerland being an important location for cryptocurrencies. Especially the canton of Zug is home to dozens of companies in this sector. Bannon sees cryptocurrencies as an important tool for the European movement against the establishment. "We take control of central banks," he said during the event, “That will give us back the power.” He also accused central banks, governments and big tech companies of taking away the rights and identities of ordinary people and using them for their own purposes. At the event he was again claiming to be a “Christian Zionist”, “recalling how he instigated the founding of the Breitbart News Jerusalem bureau, headed up by seasoned journalist Aaron Klein.”25

In the framework of the Zurich event Bannon also met two of the four co-chairmen of the AfD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel and Beatrix von Storch, in a hotel.20 Weidel's office said that she was particularly interested in Bannon's experiences with political communication and alternative media. This was indirectly confirmed by Bannon in an interview: “Mr. Bannon said that a common message he had received from populists throughout Europe was a desire to establish a media outlet for their views. ‘They see what Breitbart did and they want it in their own language,’ said Mr. Bannon […] calling that ‘phase two.’”20

Weidel had already announced in February that her party wanted to control its communication and media campaigns via the AfD’s own “newsroom". As an explanation, she mentioned that the AfD would be ignored by many media or accused of spreading "Fake News”.26 Ever since the establishment of the party-internal news desk there is a considerable alignment of stories that Breitbart publishes with topics that AfD politicians pick up on social media. That this will add to, and not decrease media polarization in Germany can be extrapolated from existing media analyses.

Breitbart has also been ascribed a role in amplifying pro-AfD sentiments in the course of the 2017 Bundestag election. Social media monitoring has shown that as the election grew closer, international far-right outlets like Breitbart and the Kremlin-sponsored RT had become top sources amongst the German far-right.27 The hashtag #MGGA (Make Germany Great Again), a German version of Trump’s presidential campaign slogan, appeared in 2,961 posts on public forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the run up of the election between 1st July and 6th September 2017. Messages using #MGGA often linked to alt-right news sites such as Daily Stormer and Breitbart.

Although there is probably no particular connection, both Bannon and Alice Weidel were formerly employed by Goldman Sachs. Bannon worked for the company until 1990, Weidel between 2005 and 2006.

After his trip to Switzerland Bannon travelled to Lille, France, to speak at the Front National congress on March 11, 2018, the same event, where the party decided to rename itself to Rassemblement National. It was during this event he uttered the by now infamous sentence: “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.”28 Retrospectively he said it was after this event that he first got the idea of a right-wing populist alliance in Europe.29

In May 2018, Bannon was taking part in a conference about the "future of Europe." In the cafes of Budapest, rumors spread that Bannon received a fee of €20,000 ($23,000) for his speech. The conference was financed with money from Hungarian tax coffers.”30 Bannon was invited to the conference by “Maria Schmift, an Orban ally and leader of the House of Terror museum, which deals with the crimes of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and especially Hungary. Some sources contend that Bannon's Hungarian connection primarily runs through a former deputy assistant to Donald Trump: Sebastian Gorka, a US citizen with British-Hungarian roots. Gorka frequently appears on the right-wing US television channel Fox News as a security analyst. Together with Bannon, Gorka was part of Trump's campaign and moved to the White House after winning the election — and then quickly moved back out.”30

On May 22, Bannon visited Prague, Czech Republic, to attend a panel debate discussing the 2016 election campaign of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, hosted by the CEVRO Institute, directed by Alexandr Vondra.31 His debating partner was Lanny Davis, who had worked for the Clinton campaign. “Vondra said the centre used the opportunity to hold a meeting on the occasion of Bannon and Davis's arrival in the Czech Republic at the invitation of the Czechoslovak Group industry and arms holding [CSG], previously called Excalibur Group, covering some 20 firms.” It was also reported that they were to visit “the Tatra Trucks producer of armoured vehicles of the Tatra Defence Vehicle company and the Retia and Eldis radar firms” following the debate.32

Next stop on Bannon’s tour was Budapest, where he was personally invited on May 24 by prime minister Victor Orbán. “Orbán received, on a one-to-one basis, several speakers of the international conference ‘The Future of Europe’ held in Budapest. British conservative author and editor Douglas Murray, Stephen K. Bannon, […] and US economist, music critic and author David P. Goldman each had one-hour-long informal discussions with the Prime Minister.”33

During his Eastern Europe trip Bannon was accompanied by former Breitbart UK editor and UKIP politician Raheem Kassam (see further below).

Le Movement / The Movement

In the end of July 2018, Bannon made headlines with making his plans public “to boost populist parties enough to create a right-wing ‘supergroup’ following EU Parliamentary elections next May”.34 As official vehicle for this project shall serve an already existing private foundation called “The Movement / Le Movement”, founded on January 9, 2017 by the Belgian far-right politician and lawyer Mischaël Modrikamen, his wife Yasmine Dehaene-Modrikamen and Laure Ferrari, an aide to Nigel Farage.35 The Brussels-based organization is to be staffed with 10 full-time employees in the forthcoming months, who will preliminarily focus on data analyses and surveys.36 According to Bannon the number might grow to 25, depending on the outcome of the 2019 European parliamentary elections.“29 Bannon told Reuters The Movement will serve as a ‘clearing house’ in Brussels, at the heart of the EU, for the ‘populist, nationalist movement in Europe’, with the objective of boosting the anti-EU presence in the European Parliament."37 The populist bloc could gather up to a third of the 705 deputies' seats in the European Parliament in next year’s European election.29 “‘Everybody agrees that next May is hugely important, that this is the real first continent-wide face-off between populism and the party of Davos,’ he said, referring to the yearly economic summit of heads of state and business in the Swiss mountain resort.”34 "Right-wing populist nationalism is what will happen. That's what will govern," he told the Daily Beast. "You're going to have individual nation states with their own identities, their own borders.”

Bannon has made the right alliances to form such an EU parliamentary supergroup. A scene from Bannon's 2019 movie The Brink shows a dinner on July 14, 2018,38 where he dwells amidst "several European ultranationalist leaders, including racists and Islamophobes who have ties to white nationalists and violent extremists," as paraphrased by an article in the Huffington Post.39 Among them: Filip Dewinter, leader of the Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang Party who advocates for Belgian-speaking Flanders to split off from the rest of Belgium; Kent Ekeroth of the far-right Sweden Democrats; Erik Almqvist, a former MP and former member of the Sweden Democrats, known for his anti-immigrant slurs;40 Raheem Kassam, former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News London, and former chief adviser to former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, as well as a close affiliate of Bannon; and also Paul Gosar, an Arizona congressman who was in town to support a rally on behalf of Tommy Robinson, "a violent English far-right anti-Muslim criminal fraudster," at which "Gosar vilified Muslims as “disgusting and depraved,'” according to the aforementioned Huffington Post article.39

 

Bannon has strong ties to Nigel Farage, co-leader of the right-wing, Euro-sceptic European parliamentary group Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), of which politicians of UKIP, AfD, Débout la France, and the Five Star Movement are members. AfD’s Beatrix von Storch became a member of the EFDD in April 2016, forestalling her imminent expulsion from the European Conservatives and Reformists group, and remained active in the EFDD until her entry into the Bundestag in September 2017.

Bannon's contact to Matteo Salvini constitutes a direct link to another important right-wing European parliamentary group, Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), which gathers MEPs from Rassemblement National, FPÖ, The League, and FPÖ. Via his DHI network, Bannon should have also access to contacts in the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), such as Nirj Deva.

There is something not quite right with Bannon's and/or Mischaël Modrikamen’s version/s of the story around the foundation of “The Movement”. This is shown by the manifold connections between its initial founders (Mischaël Modrikamen, Yasmine Dehaene-Modrikamen, Laure Ferrari) and Nigel Farage. Farage was in close contact with Bannon and the Movement’s founders already several years before the announcement of The Movement in July 2018.

Modrikamen explained the background of The Movement in a recent video interview.41 According to his description, the organization was founded in the beginning of last year as a side-project of the Belgian Parti Populaire to “unite the populist forces in Europe.” “Its goals, stated in a constitution lodged with Belgian authorities, were ‘to promote the rule of law, free enterprise, national sovereignty, effective national borders, popular consultation, the fight against radical Islam, a scientific and not dogmatic approach to climatic phenomena and the defense of Israel as a sovereign state on its historic land.’”37 But instead of embarking on these challenging goals, the project with an initial capital of a mere 2500 Euro, and registered at Modrikamen’s home address, was subsequently “put on ice”. Modrikamen stated, at the time he had sent a memo to likeminded parties in Europe and the United States, but it was not until sometime in July 2018 that Bannon got back in touch.42 The contact had been established by Nigel Farage, who told Modrikamen that Bannon would like to meet him. At a luncheon in London on July 15,42 Modrikamen stated it “clicked”, that they “absolutely shared the same convictions […] to give back to the whole world the sovereignty of the people and to be the voice of their voice, such as Trump is the voice of the ordinary man in the United States…”

The luncheon was attended by 8 or 9 persons, amongst them Nigel Farage, Steve Bannon, Raheem Kassam, Yasmine Dehaene-Modrikamen, Mischaël Modrikamen and Laure Ferrari. Raheem Kassam, former senior advisor of Nigel Farage, was hired by Bannon in 2014 to set up the Breitbart London office43 , together with James Delingpole. Kassam left Breitbart in May 2018. “As for what he’ll do next, Kassam said he’s joined the advisory board for ISSEP44 , the political training school for right-wing leaders being launched by Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the niece of Front National leader Marine Le Pen. Its website lists him as a ‘member of the scientific council.’”45

Another luncheon guest, the French Laure Ferrari (*1979) made acquaintance with then leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, in 2007, while working as a waitress in Strasbourg, which led her to start a political career.46 Subsequently she was made director of public relations for the British delegation of the right-wing European parliamentary group Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) (2009-2014), which later became the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group, co-chaired by Nigel Farage.47 Up from 2014 Ferrari became head of the the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), an Eurosceptic think tank, attached to the Alliance for Direct Democracy (ADDE), a Brussels-based non-profit organization founded by UKIP affiliates in 2015.48

The Executive Director of ADDE, as well as contact person on the ADDE website is Yasmine Dehaene-Modrikamen, also amongst the initial founders of The Movement.49 The IDDE was accused in 2017 of having illegally diverted public money to the benefits of UKIP. UKIP was under investigation for having received over £400,000 in donations from the think tank prior to the UK General Election and the Brexit referendum.50 Both projects, the ADDE and the IDDE, seem to have become defunct with the arising legal difficulties. When the European Parliament stopped funding the IDDE, Ferrari moved to Farage’s home for a while in February 2017.50 In November 2017, the European Parliament initiated an investigation in regards to a possible breach of its financing rules, and subsequently Modrikamen's offices were raided “as part of a probe of funding linked to UKIP, though he and all those involved reject any wrongdoing.”37 Mondrikamen seems to have also established good Russian contacts. He had visited the Russian parliament in 2015 and subsequently “called for an end to sanctions against Moscow imposed for its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and for its support of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. And he said Europeans and the United States should be working on common ground with Russia, notably in combating violent Islamist movements.”51

On September 24, 2018, Bannon met Czech President Miloš Zeman and AfD MP Petr Bystron near Prague. According to The Gateway Pundit, which reported on the event, the meeting was “arranged by Bystron […], a former Czech refugee from communism.”52

While, according to the Czech press secretary Jiří Ovčáček, relations of the West with the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China as well as prospects for the EU were discussed,53 Bystron’s office’ recapitulation of the conversation, published in The Gateway Pundit, sounded markedly different:52

The three conservative mavericks discussed strategies for a conservative turnaround of the struggling continent, which is beset by uncontrolled mass immigration, Islamic terror, migrant rapes and murders, welfare freeloading and the crisis of the bloated EU bureaucracy […] They agreed the EU, which has threatened conservative members like Poland and Hungary with draconic punishments for not toeing Brussels’ Soros-dominated line, can not survive in its current form, and requires urgent reform at all levels.

The Gateway Pundit article further subsumes the talks:

President Zeman expressed deep concern about the threat by militant Islam and the need for action against it, while Bystron focused on the consequences of mass immigration to Germany — where migrants are six times as likely to commit sexual assaults and nine times more likely to commit homicide than the rest of the population. According to Bystron’s office, migrants are also nine times as likely to be on welfare. ‘Just as the Left has the Socialist International, we need to forge a Conservative International to unite the forces of reason, responsibility, democracy and national sovereignty, and save the continent from imminent destruction,” said Bystron […]

In the context of the meeting, Bannon and Bystron can be seen on pictures together with Tomáš Golem Měšťan, aka “Walter Edward Kurtz,”54 working for the Czech edition of the far-right conspiracist PI News (PI = Politically Incorrect). Bystron gave an interview to PI News after the conference, where he stated: “I am looking forward to collaborate with Steve Bannon and other patriots in Europe, such as Matteo Salvini, HC Strache, and others.”

According to PI News’s own statement, as of 2016 there were about 50 local groups that had formed by readers of the internet portal in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Research by the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Süddeutsche Zeitung shows, these local groups were acting as online and offline mob, whose distruptive actions included physical disturbance of events and online harassment.55

Tomáš Golem Měšťan(left), Petr Bystron (centre) and David Antoš (right) in Prague, September 23, 2018.

In November 2018, Bannon met with the fascist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin in the Hotel de Russie in Rome, where they spent a whole day getting to know each other.56

2019

In the meantime, Bannon has expanded the radius of the Movement, not only focusing on the American and European sphere of influence. The Spanish newspaper ABC reported in February 2019 that Bannon elected the son of Jair Bolsonaro, Eduardo Bolsonaro, as leader of The Movement in Latin America.57

In March 2019, Bannon appeared on the We Build The Wall (WBTW) website as a team member,58 whereby several of his affiliates had been already on the team, including the former Breitbarters Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence. WBTW has been soliciting donations to build private sections of the wall along the Mexico–U.S. border. It started as a GoFundMe campaign by US Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage in December 2018,59 and a non-profit organization was started in January 2019.60 By mid-2020, over $25 million had been raised61 and a 3-mile (4.8 km) section of fence had been built.62 Besides chairman Bannon, WBTW's advisory board includes politicians and activists with a hard-line stance on illegal immigration, including former secretary of state of Kansas Kris Kobach; former congressman Tom Tancredo; Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince; and former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke.

At the end of March 2019, Chinese news reported that Bannon was among a group of predominantly senior former intelligence personnel and policy advisors, who had "revived a cold war-era advocacy organisation to take aim at China."63 In its announcement on 25 March, the "Committee on the Present Danger: China" (CPDC) stated it would be dedicated to “public education and advocacy against the full array of conventional and non-conventional dangers” posed by the Chinese Communist Party.63

The first incarnation of the CPD emerged in 1950, founded by Tracy Voorhees, to promote the plans proposed in NSC 68 by Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson.64 According to scholar Ernest R. May, NSC 68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s."65 the CPD was privately revived in March 1976, and after Jimmy Carter won the election, CPD went public again and spent the next four years lobbying, particularly against a détente with Russia and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) agreement. This iteration of the CPD provided 33 officials to the Ronald Reagan administration. The current revival of the group has around 45 members, including Steve Bannon.66

In April 2019 it was reported that the German Alternative for Germany party had invited Bannon just weeks before the upcoming EU parliamentary election "to a media conference in Berlin for right-wing journalists and bloggers," entitled "1st Conference of the Free Media."67 Der Spiegel reported that Petr Bystron's office had confirmed the invitation of Bannon to the lower house of parliament.

In April 2019, MSNBC published a video report that gives an insight into Bannon's current activity in the Vatican. According to Bannon, the Vatican experiences a financial crisis, which he wants to help to resolve. The report also sheds more light on his activities in the monastery of Trisulti, which Bannon wants to turn into an elite training camp of "Gladiators."68

When in April 2019, Bannon's publicly announced his cadre school, the project sems to have been already in the making for a while. In February 2018, the DHI had announced that it had signed an "accord with the Italian Ministry of Culture to become the official leaseholder of the historic Abbey of Trisulti," an isolated monastery complex in the mountains of central Italy, which holds an ancient library of 38 0000 volumes.69 It "will be the home of a number of projects that underscore the fact that man is made in the image and likeness of God, and that recognition of the imago Dei is the cornerstone of the Judaeo-Christian foundations of Western Civilisation," according to the DHI's president Benjamin Harnwell.69

However, the project faced increased difficulties. The Italian La Repubblica had revealed in May 2019, that some of the paperwork submitted in the course of the public bid for the lease was forged:70 a letter, signed by a former employee of the Danish bank Jyske located in Gibraltar, provided as a guarantee for the 19-year lease of the monastery.71 After inquiries, the bank stated the signatory had not worked at the bank in years, therefor the letter must be fraudulent.71 The Italian Heritage Ministry was therefor annulling the lease on May 31, 2019.72

Bannon's plans have also led to local initiatives to stop the project. In March around 200 protesters from the Italian village of Collepardo embarked on a protest march, holding posters saying "Stop Bannon - Free Europe" and "#BannOFF."73 A heroine in the fight against Bannon's project is 64-year old local activist Letizia Roccasecca, who stated in an interview with the Financial Times that for her "Trisulti is becoming the centre of the worldwide struggle against fascism and nationalism."74

In summer of 2019 Bannon's relation with the arch-reactionary Cardinal Raymond Burke, a former DHI supporter and anti-Francis proponent himself, soured. According to an interview with the New York Times, Burke stated in that regard75 :

Douthat: What about your own relationship to Steve Bannon, which has been a source of great media fascination?

Burke: I came to know Steve Bannon through my involvement with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, an association founded to assist European parliamentarians in following the demands of the moral law. Eventually, Bannon also became involved in its work. I met with him on three or four occasions, as I recall, to discuss Catholic teaching with him. From my point of view, they were conversations of a priest with a member of the lay faithful, which concerned the moral duty of a Catholic in public life. When the media presented more and more my relationship as my cooperation in his particular political program, I had to clarify the matter.

The final straw was the announcement of his plan to make a movie of the book by Frédéric Martel, “In the Closet of the Vatican,” a project [concerned with closeted homosexuality among Catholic clergy] with which I was in complete and clear disagreement. It was necessary for me to make clear that I have never been part of Bannon’s political organization. In my relationship with him, I have tried to fulfill my mission, as a priest, to teach the faith and morals for the common good.

In October 2019 Bannon created a YouTube channel called War Room: Pandemic,76 which had published over 500 episodes before it was shut down following the January 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, D.C., where he regurgitated the many lies, conspiracies and spins he helped forge: from the 2020 election being fraudulent77 to the COVID-19 virus having escaped from a Chinese military lab.78

2020

A few months later, around February 2020, a website of the same name went online (https://pandemic.warroom.org), which as of 2021 is still accessible.79

In May 2020 it was reported that the legal difficulties in regard to the lease agreement of the Trisulti monastery were overcome.80 "An administrative court in Lazio has overturned a decision by the Ministry of Culture to revoke the 19-year lease handed to the group seeking to implement President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist’s plans," according to the catholic The Tablet. "Benjamin Harnwell, who runs the institute, said that following the decision the restoration of the monastery will continue, while registration for online courses, run from the United States, will open on 1 June."81

Bannon was shortly detained in August82 while on the luxury yacht of his Chinese billionaire sponsor Guo Wengui, and charged with fraud relating to the We Build The Wall campaign, but quickly released on bail.

On September 29, 2020, a prominent politician of the German far-right AfD party, Beatrix von Storch, led an interview with Steve Bannon entitled "Coup against Trump?," in which he is insinuating that US Democrats would commit voting fraud in the November 2020 presidential election.83 He is also scapegoating Antifa and Black Lives Matter, alleging they would create a situation of civil unrest in which the country would become ungovernable.

On November 5, 2020, Bannon had pleaded in one of his broadcasts for the beheading of Tony Fauci, member of the White House COVID-19 task force, and of FBI director Christopher Wray, besides calling for a civil war, whereupon he was deplatformed by Twitter, but not Facebook.84

One day after Bannon’s call for Fauci's and Wray's beheading his "longtime lawyer, William Burck, asked to withdraw from his client’s criminal case," according to an article by Bloomberg.85

The FTC started an investigation into Bannon's activities relating to the election rigging firm Cambridge Analytica, as evident from a petition dating November 9, 2020.86

FTC petition for Bannon to testify in Cambridge Analytica investigation. Source: Twitter.

On December 11, 2020, Bannon hired the lawyer of former NYC mayor turned pro-Trump grifter Rudy Giuliani, Robert J. Costello, to represent him in the We Build The Wall fraud case. According to an article by Bloomberg85 :

Costello, a former deputy chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, was named in a court filing Friday. He was tapped by Rudy Giuliani last year to represent the former mayor in investigations about his business dealings and work in Ukraine.

In the Mueller Report Volume II, Costello is described as having "a close relationship to Rudy Giuliani"87 :

Costello told [Michael] Cohen that he had a “back channel of communication” to Giuliani, and that Giuliani had said the "channel" was "crucial" and "must be maintained."

2021

On January 5, 2021, Bannon reportedly attended a meeting at the Willard Hotel "as part of an effort to persuade Members of Congress to block the certification of the election the next day," according to the Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.88 On the eve of the insurrection, Bannon said in a War Room show that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”89

Following the "storm on the Capitol" on January 6, 2021, by belligerent Trump supporters, Bannon's "War Room" was finally suspended from YouTube. The ban occurred after an interview with Giuliani who blamed the Democrats for the riot.90

On January 14, 2021, Bloomberg White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs stated on Twitter that "Trump has repeatedly spoken by phone with Steve Bannon in recent weeks to seek advice on his campaign to overturn his re-election defeat, reconciling with his once-estranged ex White House strategist ..."91 92

On January 20, 2021, Steve Bannon received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump on his last day in office.93

In August 2021, Bannon took part in a "Cyber Security Symposium" in Sioux City, Iowa, organized by the MyPillow owner and supporter of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Mike Lindell. On this occasion, Bannon introduced The Movement's Latin America leader, Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil's ultra-right president Jair Bolsonaro, to Mike Lindell.94

On September 23, 2021, Bannon was subpoenaed by the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, demanding documents as well as his testimony to the Committee. The Select Committee named three incidences as reasons for this step88 :

Stephen Bannon reportedly communicated with former President Trump on December 30th, 2020, urging him to focus his efforts on January 6th. Mr. Bannon also reportedly attended a gathering at the Willard Hotel on January 5th, 2021, as part of an effort to persuade Members of Congress to block the certification of the election the next day. Mr. Bannon is also quoted as stating, on January 5th, that “[a]ll Hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

Bannon's lawyers gave the Committee advance notice that he would not comply. After he did not appear, the House of Representatives voted to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress and to refer him to the Justice Department. This was initiated by the nine-member Committee's unanimous vote on October 19,95 followed by the full House of Representatives which voted 229–202, with all 220 Democrats and 9 Republicans in favor of the resolution, on October 21.96 He was indicted by a federal grand jury on November 12, 2021 on two criminal contempt charges: one count of not providing documents, one count of not testifying. If convicted, he could serve up to one year in jail for each count.97

On November 15, Bannon surrendered to authorities.98 He was released without bail, but he must keep authorities informed of his whereabouts, and he cannot leave the country.99

In a December War Room episode, Matt Gaetz appeared as an interview guest. Under the headline "Matt Gaetz Star Chamber Will Destroy Administrative State" the two discussed their strategy to take full control of the government should the former president win in 2024.100

Gaetz stated that "Sometimes you've got to raise your voice to raise a ruckus and to raise an army of patriots who love this country and will fight for her." Bannon got more concrete100 :

This is Trumpism in power. That's when we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that's going to man the government. Get them ready now. Right? We're going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams and all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins in 2024—or before.

On December 19, 2021, Trump operative Roger Stone who was also subpoenaed by the the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection "tossed Steve Bannon under the bus," as the Daily Beast reported101 :

Stone, who has long been at odds with Bannon over the latter “testify[ing] falsely” against him during his criminal trial, took to the far-right messaging platform Telegram to suggest Bannon was behind the call to “breach” the Capitol building on Jan 6. “It is highly likely that [Steve] Bannon really gave the order to breach the capital [sic] and maneuvered patriots into dangerous positions,” he wrote. “A neophyte Steve Bannon was willing to try crazy things like this to curry favor with Trump who had a [sic] no interest in Bannon’s bullsh*t.”

 

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