No Epstein class supervillain has paid any meaningful public or legal price for his crimes, other than throwing around cash settlements in exchange for silence. Evading justice is, of course, one element of supervillainy.
But there are gradations of evasion – from shamed hiding to gleeful skating.
This week, we want to take another look at one Epstein fanboy still smirking under the radar. The self-described “Leninist” strategist Steve Bannon masterminded one of the greatest political tricks in years: convincing poor whites that the Republican party – the party of the moneyed, the corporations and the borderless oligarchy, led by a nepo-baby fake businessman – is the faction that really cares about the welfare of “low propensity” voters.
But the guy who made “elites versus working people” and “smash the administrative state” into right-wing rallying cries was also one of Epstein’s coziest pals in Trumpworld. In fact, DOJ records suggest that Epstein was the pivotal man in Bannon’s transformation from right-wing American douchebag with a string of failed marriages and a simmering resentment at Hollywood libs into an international man of mystery with a Bernard-Henri Lévy hairdo (maintained, on Epstein’s recommendation, with “simply silver” shampoo), cutting deals across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Bannon has so far not only avoided Epstein-related subpoenas or testimony of any kind, he has also managed to escape scrutiny from the very audience he spent years ginning up with Deep State pedo theories – an audience that Trump won over, in part, by promising to expose Epstein’s pals. He remains such an influential figure in MAGA world that he is poised to play a major role in Trump’s plan to cheat the midterms.
Besides Trump, Bannon is almost alone among exposed members of the Epstein class in remaining in good odor with the MAGAs who, a mere year ago, were demanding public shaming and legal action against all of Epstein’s pals.
The DOJ files reveal Bannon to be not just a pal of Epstein, but someone single-mindedly keyed into Epstein’s access to the global elite. Within weeks of their first meeting, Epstein connected him with influential UN diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, who helped ease Bannon’s entry into geopolitical and financial hunting grounds like the Gulf monarchies and Mongolia, of which Bannon told Epstein, “we can make that place a crypto capital.”
Epstein seems to have advised Bannon as he broke away from Trump and set out to build his own “grassroots army.” He conferred with Bannon on launching his own dark money organization, “Citizens of the American Republic,” with $100 million in bitcoin, discussed with MIT’s Joi Ito the idea of helping Bannon finance his movement with a crypto “deplorable coin,” and encouraged Bannon to create a new “world bank of the people” for his “workers party.” Before long, Steve was hooked up with the director of Davos and moving and shaking with the sheiks.
Epstein called him “lambchop.”
The Epstein-Bannon bromance began around the fall of 2017, a few months after Bannon bottomed out of the White House. At the time, he claimed he had been liberated: “I feel jacked,” he told The Weekly Standard, “I’ve got my hands back on my [media] weapons.”
He fell even further out of favor with Trump by early 2018, when Michael Wolff quoted him calling Donald Trump Jr. “treasonous” for meeting with Russians at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. Bannon soon lost not just Trump but also the critical, lavish support of his eccentric billionaire patroness, Rebekah Mercer.
Enter Jeff.
The first mentions of Bannon and Epstein getting together appear in October 2017, when Wolff tells Epstein that Bannon “wants a secret meet.” Epstein was, of course, fine with secrets. He instructed Wolff to “suggest to SB that my meeting with him is just he and me. better to have total privacy on certain issues [sic].” A few days later, he cast another lure, advising Wolff, “you can tell SB , I have some ideas for him [sic]”.
The beautiful friendship kicked off with this February 2018 exchange:
Soon, Wolff was reporting that Bannon was “all hepped up on Saudi stuff.” “I told him you were the man,” Wolff wrote Epstein. “He seemed to know that.”
Within a few months, Epstein was jetting Bannon over to the Middle East to meet some of his other special friends among the Gulf oil monarchies. “All the boys are celebrating ramadan but will see you if you want,” Epstein wrote in a May 2018 text exchange. “Only there for 2 days and going out in desert with mbz [sic],” replied Bannon, referring to the leader of the United Arab Emirates.
Epstein also played sideline cheerleader as Bannon got dragged into the various 2018 congressional probes into Trump’s sleaze, urging him to “stay mentally tough” in the face of subpoenas from the House Intelligence Committee and the Mueller investigation. He even offered Bannon the surveillance-resistant safety of his mansion, which, he bragged in one email, “is similar to a SCIF.”
Bannon ultimately agreed to cooperate with Mueller, just days before his first in-person meeting with Epstein in early 2018.
Epstein’s lawyer and pal Reid Weingarten (who we covered last week) was excited about bringing Bannon into the Epstein claque. “Try to make the bannon [sic] meet happen with me there,” he wrote Epstein in early 2018. “There is play here…”
Epstein was also consulting his feminist “arch defender,” superlawyer Kathy Ruemmler, about Bannon, while looping him in on the activities of her client, Lebanese businessman George Nader. Coincidentally – or not – Ruemmler was representing Nader, a convicted pedophile, who, like Bannon, was cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
Bannon’s communications with Epstein reveal more about the behind-the-scenes geopolitical activities that involved national security, great game rivalry with China over tech, and, presumably, money.
In one lengthy May 2019 exchange – as Bannon was planning a trip to Kazakhstan arranged by Epstein – they discuss Saudi Arabia using China’s Huawei for 5G, which the U.S. felt would give China a surveillance edge in the Middle East. “You saw where they begged us to give 90 day reprieve on huawai [sic],” Bannon writes. “Yes of course,” Epstein responds. “The real game is in the shadows … as usual.” Their “game” somehow involved the Kazakh government: “kazakh daughter the key,” Epstein advised before telling him, “Im asking for a meeting with the pres and intelligence chief [sic].”
Bannon was no stranger to the dark side. He actually got his new friend Jeff quite worried about his relationship with Chinese fraudster Guo Wengui, on whose private jet Bannon flew around the country stumping for Republicans in summer 2018, possibly violating campaign finance laws. Two years later, Bannon was lolling aboard Guo’s $28 million yacht when he was arrested for defrauding small “big beautiful wall” donors. (Trump later pardoned him.)
Last week, Guo was sentenced to 30 years in prison for massively defrauding investors. But for several years, Bannon had a million-dollar consulting contract with him.
In their emails, Bannon and Epstein refer to Guo as “Kwok” – “Miles Kwok” being another name Guo used. Epstein seems to have become wise to the real Kwok/Guo before Bannon did, and he warned him repeatedly.
“Do u know my man miles kwok [sic],” Bannon texts in one thread.
Epstein cautioned that the Chinese businessman was going to get them both in trouble. “Careful,” he warned Bannon.
In the same thread, they joke about the movie Chinatown and the famous scene in which Roman Polanski slices Jack Nicholson’s nose. Jeff writes: “my very close friends as a favor , also would like you safe … if either one of us , in different investigations will need to testify publicly, it would be preferred to do it with two nostrils instead of one [sic].”
It’s not clear which of Epstein’s “very close friends” wanted Bannon “safe” – or what exactly they thought Guo could do to them.
Later in the same exchange, Epstein writes, “re kwok , honybear ok. icarus not [sic]”. “Will explain kwok later-- like trump an instrument,” Bannon responds, to which Epstein replies, “I am very well informed there. , didn’t know it was him [sic]”. (Epstein’s “honeybear” remark is a reference to Bannon’s favorite nickname for himself: “Honey Badger.”)
By December 2018, six months before Epstein’s arrest, the two men were such close buds they were yukking it up about the #MeToo movement – “so many guys caught in the me too . reaching out to me [sic],” Epstein wrote – and joking about organizing a “million man march” on Washington where everyone would wear “pink dick hats.” Another favorite target was their mutual acquaintance Donald Trump. “If you Google the word idiot, a picture of Donald Trump comes up …” Epstein texted. “Pop-up picture ---signed,” Bannon quipped back.
Bannon has recovered from his fall after Trump 1.0. His pardon in the fraud case and his stint in jail for blowing off a congressional subpoena only burnished his legend as a rebel against the Deep State. He remains extremely influential through his War Room media platform, the same platform he used for years to juice the Epstein Deep State conspiracy.
This Epstein class insider has remained a leader of the “deplorables” – perhaps not so shockingly, given that a million of them recently let Trump fleece them with his crypto coin for a reported $3.8 billion.
Bannon’s War Room doesn’t have the reach of Fox. But it is available across a wide range of platforms, including Real America’s Voice, Apple Podcasts, Rumble, Spotify, as well as X and email lists. It now functions as a powerful political organizing tool. Bannon always gives his listeners something to do: show up at school boards, pressure members of Congress, flood phone lines, organize local conventions, challenge elections, and support specific candidates.
He has kept the pedal to the metal on the 2020 election lies.
If anything, his influence is greater in the second Trump administration than it was in the first. War Room is now a key stop on the right-wing DC media circuit. And it is gearing up to serve as a critical node in the alliance between influencers, right-wing media and the White House as they prepare the vote suppression and election fraud plot to subvert the midterms.
There is one reliably incendiary topic, though, that Bannon has jettisoned along the way to his current position as the King of Fake Populists.
It begins with the letter E.
Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.
Katie Chenoweth is associate professor of French at Princeton University and an investigative researcher.
Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow
