In news that should surprise no one, Steve Bannon — the right-wing conspiracy theorist who helped put Donald Trump in office — is a cheapskate.
According to a report from The Daily Beast, the former Breitbart co-founder owes possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to members of his legal team representing him in recent federal and state investigations. Bannon’s been facing criminal charges in multiple cases over his alleged misuse of donations to a GoFundMe campaign intended to raise money to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Prosecutors have accused Bannon of money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud which is why the FBI arrested him in 2020 — as he was vacationing on a Chinese billionaire’s yacht.
His legal team was instrumental in ensuring Bannon stayed out of prison and got a pardon from Trump while he was still in office, which is why insiders close to the racist demagogue are confused as to why he’d skimp on paying his own lawyers.
Bannon’s refusal to fully pay his bills has stunned some of his close advisers who’ve stuck around for years.
“I don’t have any reason to believe he doesn’t have money,” one associate said.
After all, Bannon is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, co-founded the right-wing news website Breitbart, made tens of millions off the iconic sitcom Seinfeld, and hangs out with Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. In fact, he was relaxing, reading a book on Wengui’s yacht just off the coast of Westbrook, Connecticut when he was arrested by FBI special agents in August 2020.
Bannon reportedly owes his longtime New York attorney Robert Costello more than $100,000 while his other lawyers, Evan Corcoran and David Schoen have either quit filing motions in his defense or asked to be removed from his counsel altogether. Bannon’s legal dine-and-dash is especially bizarre given the fact that he’s currently still under the microscope for his role in the Jan. 6th insurrection and he desperately needs representation if he hopes to win an appeal of a previous conviction relating to the House Oversight Committee’s investigation.
(Via The Daily Beast)