The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:52 am

Behind the Casey Key address Steve Bannon used, a questionable associate

Chris Anderson Most Popular Our Picks
Special Report: Questions raised about President Trump’s association with former adviser Stephen K. Bannon mirror those raised about Bannon’s relationship with Andrew Badolato.

It was a phone call between two of the world’s most powerful men, a conversation of such consequence that even the portrait of Andrew Jackson leaned in to listen, or so it seemed inside the Oval Office on that momentous Saturday afternoon.

When Donald Trump’s first presidential discussion with Russian leader Vladimir Putin took place on Jan. 28, 2017 only a select few of his most-trusted men stood before him at the historic Resolute desk, among them being Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and advisor so influential it was not deemed necessary he wear a tie during high-level meetings impacting global affairs.

At roughly the same time that day, in striking contrast to the Trump-Putin phone call Bannon was witnessing, a different conversation was occurring in the semi-circular driveway of a home on Casey Key Road, a narrow lane of hidden paradise in south Sarasota County that meanders between opulent tropical mansions and transitory views of the turquoise-tinted Gulf.

It was there that a 53-year-old man in cargo shorts was explaining to a Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputy that he was not involved in the theft of two antique clay pots from his neighbor, never mind the complainant’s statement in a report that the man’s house “has some shady individuals inside and may have something to do with the theft.”

The man being questioned told the deputy he didn’t steal the pots, and besides, he had been in Washington, D.C., for Trump’s inauguration at the time of the alleged theft. The deputy took his statement, drove off, and left the man to walk back inside. When he reached the front door of his weathered yellow home he was greeted by the sight of a mannequin, posed just inside the entrance.

The man’s name was Andrew Badolato.

And Bannon — who once held such power in the White House that he was seated on the National Security Council, unprecedented in American history for a presidential adviser, and was allotted access to this country’s most sensitive intelligence with the highest level of security clearance — has recurrently been associated with him since 2003.

Badolato’s past — according to county and federal court records, state business filings, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office reports, interviews with former associates and internal documents obtained by the Herald-Tribune — includes numerous lawsuits, substantial monetary judgments and sizeable Internal Revenue Service liens filed against him; business dealings with convicted felons for stock-related fraud; an extortion attempt after he borrowed money from a self-described mobster that led to him wearing a wire for the FBI; an association with a Costa Rican offshore firm that was called a “money laundering hub” by the Justice Department; and sexual assault allegations made by three women over a period of four years that allegedly took place inside his million-dollar home on Casey Key Road.

Badolato, a 1982 graduate of Cardinal Mooney High in Sarasota, has never been charged with a crime, nor has he been the subject of any “regulatory body investigation, proceeding or hearing,” according to a letter from his attorney, Wil Florin, who added that “Mr. Badolato, as you know, is a private figure. He has no interest in entering the public discourse on any subject related to him including your upcoming article. He is a single father and a well-liked and respected businessman in the Tampa Bay area.”

Repeated attempts to reach Bannon, who has never been charged with a crime either, for comment about his longstanding relationship with Badolato were unsuccessful.

Their relationship has been such that Bannon declared on a Sarasota County voter registration form he lived at Badolato’s address while running Trump’s 2016 campaign, a logistical challenge considering the headquarters was based 1,198 miles away at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, where Bannon occupied a corner office that he was seen in nearly every day he wasn’t traveling on the campaign trail, according to Michael Wolff’s best-selling book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

Experts say Bannon’s relationship with Badolato should have raised red flags with the FBI — the agency responsible for the initial vetting of Bannon for his White House security clearance.

Government officials seeking security clearance are required to fill out an exhaustive form known as an SF-86 for FBI background checks. Applicants, according to the form, must list “the places where you have lived, beginning with your present residence and working back 10 years. Residences for the entire period must be accounted for without breaks.” Because the forms are not public record and the White House does not comment on individual security clearances, it is unclear whether Bannon listed Badolato’s address.

According to the form, “The U.S. Criminal Code provides that knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact is a felony which may result in fines and/or up to five years imprisonment.”

The White House has been recently embroiled in security clearance controversies involving former staff secretary Rob Porter, who held an interim clearance for months despite the FBI’s knowledge of domestic abuse accusations made by two ex-wives, and security clearance issues involving the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Porter resigned, and as a result, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly outlined changes to the security clearance process in a memo to senior White House officials on Feb. 16. Kushner’s security clearance was later downgraded — he no longer has access to top secret information.

“The American people deserve a White House staff that meets the highest standards and that has been carefully vetted — especially those who work closely with the president or handle sensitive national security information,” Kelly wrote in the memo. “We should — and in the future, must — do better.”

Porter, who saw highly-classified information on a daily basis, was among several senior officials working without permanent security clearance status. Included in that group is Kushner. It is not known whether Bannon — who worked in the White House for a year before being fired on August 18, 2017 — had a permanent clearance or was operating with an interim one.

Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005-2007 and currently a professor at the University of Minnesota, said Bannon’s recurring 13-year relationship with Badolato should have precluded him from becoming a powerful senior White House advisor with unlimited access and undeniable influence.

“I can think of ten other reasons,” Painter said, “but this in and of itself should have disqualified him from being in the White House.”

Security clearance concerns

Relatively unknown outside the alt-right conservative base, Bannon replaced Paul Manafort and joined Trump’s presidential campaign as CEO on Aug. 17, 2016. He is largely credited for helping orchestrate one of the biggest upsets in United States political history.

When Bannon took over, Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits in some polls. As a reward, Bannon was named as Trump’s chief strategist on Nov. 13, 2016, and was placed on the National Security Council “principals committee” on Jan. 28, 2017, after Trump signed a presidential order he reportedly may not have been fully briefed on.

The National Security Act of 1947 states that “the National Security Council is responsible for the interaction of domestic, foreign and military policies relating to the national security” and to hold a seat requires the highest security clearance. Bannon would have had to possess a “top-secret clearance,” and a “SCI” or “Sensitive Compartmental Information” clearance. The Office of the Inspector General defines a “top-secret clearance” as one that “gives you access to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”

“SCI” is defined as “classified information concerning, or derived from, intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes that must be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director, Central Intelligence Agency.”

To obtain a security clearance, Bannon would have been required to fill out the SF-86 form. According to Bradley Moss, a Washington D.C. attorney who specializes in national security and security clearance law, the FBI would have combed through Bannon’s completed form, spoken with people from his past and then personally interviewed him. From there, the FBI would have submitted its assessment to the White House Security Personnel Office, which is not part of the West Wing and has an independent director. If the Security Personnel Office is concerned about an element of someone’s past, the White House counsel is often contacted.

By law, Bannon would have been required to list Badolato’s address on his application. That’s because on Aug. 19, 2016 — just two days after he became Trump’s campaign CEO — he claimed it as his home on a Sarasota County voter registration form to establish residency in Florida — fulfilling one of the state’s three requirements for residency. The other two include filing a “declaration of domicile” with the court clerk and applying for a homestead property tax exemption. According to the Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s website, Bannon did not apply for either.

An SF-86 form, according to the State Department, requires that applicants reveal all former residences they have lived at in the last 10 years. “Indicate the actual physical location of your residence, not a Post Office box or a permanent residence when you were not physically located there,” the form states. “If you split your time between one or more residences during a time period you must list all residences.”

In addition, applicants must name someone who knew them at that address — preferably someone still in the area — and provide that person’s contact information. “Do not list your spouse, cohabitant or other relatives,” the form states. A box must be checked indicating if the applicant owned, rented, leased or “other.” Listing “other” requires an explanation.

If Bannon did indeed list the Sarasota County address as required, it could have led the FBI to Badolato’s name. The FBI could have then checked into Badolato’s background and investigated Bannon’s association with him. It is unclear if any of this happened because the document is not a public record.

“It’s very possible he completely and properly filled out the form and this association slipped through the cracks (of the FBI),” Moss said. “I would not be surprised in the slightest if that happened.”

Bannon — whose driver’s license was issued in California — also owns houses in the Golden State. If he was intent on establishing Florida residency, he could have afforded to buy or rent a house on his own. According to his White House financial disclosure form, which calls for an estimated range of personal wealth, not a specific amount, Bannon stated he had $100,000 to $250,000 in one bank account and two other accounts estimated at having $500,001 to $1 million each. Bannon estimated he held assets of $11.8 million to $53.8 million, according to the form.

According to Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” Bannon never lived in Sarasota during the campaign. Wolff described Bannon in the book as being “suddenly transformed inside Trump Tower, an office he entered on August 15 (2016) and for practical purposes did not exit, save for a few hours a night (and not every night) in his temporary midtown Manhattan accommodations, until January 17 (2017), when the transition team moved to Washington.”

Bannon himself offered hints he never lived in Sarasota County as well. In October 2016, Bannon registered to vote in New York — while still registered in Florida — and listed his home address as a one-bedroom apartment across from Bryant Park in Manhattan. Florida law specifies that it is not illegal to be registered to vote in two states, but you can only vote in one.

Wolff told the Herald-Tribune he had no knowledge of Bannon residing in Sarasota during Trump’s 2016 campaign or presidential transition period.

“He couldn’t have lived there,” he said. “I know he was basically in Trump Tower the entire time. He was literally there every day.”

‘A very, very dangerous man’

The SF-86 security clearance form states that withholding, misrepresenting or falsifying information “may affect your eligibility for a sensitive position” and “affect access to classified information.” Furthermore, the form says, “potential consequences include, but are not limited to, removal, debarment from federal service or prosecution.”

According to the State Department’s Adjudication Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Access to Classified Information “conduct involving questionable judgment, lack of candor, dishonesty or unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations can raise questions about an individual’s reliability, trustworthiness and ability to protect classified information.”

According to the same guidelines, conditions that could raise a security question and may be disqualifying include “association with persons involved in criminal activity.”

Badolato, though never charged with a crime, has been associated with criminal activity in the past. According to a federal court document, for example, he borrowed $12,500 at 500 percent interest in 2008 from Luis Caputo, a Sarasota resident who claimed ties to the Gambino organized crime family. Federal court records show Badolato was threatened by Caputo when he couldn’t pay back the loan. He eventually helped the FBI bring down Caputo on extortion charges by taping their meetings and exchanging marked bills. Caputo was sentenced to two years in prison in 2013 and died a year later at age 78. Badolato was so afraid of Caputo, records show, that he requested after-hours protection by the Sarasota Police Department.

“I don’t want to be the one to say based on this relationship Bannon should have been disqualified,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy. “But I would say the fact of the relationship ought to have been a consideration and, if it wasn’t, then that was an oversight in the process.”

Whether or not it was an oversight may not have mattered, however. In granting security clearance, the president is the ultimate arbiter, according to the security expert, Moss. If the president wishes to grant a person clearance, no matter their past activities or former associations, he has the authority to override any recommendations of denial from the FBI.

“He could have hired Charlie Manson and no one would have had the legal authority to have questioned that decision,” Moss said, though throughout history presidents have rarely taken this course of action.

Beth Rosenson, who teaches political ethics at the University of Florida, said it is not known how much of Badolato’s past Bannon knew of and pointed out that people who do questionable things don’t always inform acquaintances of their actions. Still, she said, the relationship “calls into question Bannon’s judgment for sure and it calls into question Trump’s judgment for selecting him” as one of his most trusted advisors.

Rosenson said she teaches her students that politicians in the public trust should be held to the highest of standards, not only as it pertains to their own personal conduct but with the people they surround themselves with.

“Bannon has exhibited questionable judgment on a number of fronts so I wouldn’t be surprised by this,” Rosenson said. “It doesn’t look good and it doesn’t smell good.”

Painter, President Bush’s former ethics attorney, said of Bannon’s association with Badolato: “I think it shows a pattern of a complete lack of judgment.”

Of Bannon, Painter added: “He’s a very, very dangerous man.”

Multiple sexual assault allegations

Bannon and Badolato — a self-described venture capitalist — have a relationship that goes back to 2003.

They have been in at least three failed penny-stock ventures together, and Bannon was once removed from a Sarasota County company’s board for his relationship with Badolato.

In 2010, Badolato formed a company listing Bannon as a board member alongside an attorney named L.B. Moon, who was barred from practicing law by the Oklahoma Supreme Court for threatening to kill an adversary, place his body in a shredder and have his daughter raped.

For seven years — even while he was in the White House — Bannon used another one of Badolato’s addresses, this time a Sarasota office — 2033 Main Street, Suite 400 — for one of the film companies he owned. It was the same address Badolato used for nearly a decade for various businesses, many of which failed, according to court documents. At one point in 2011 they even shared the office for two separate companies at the same time, state records show.

In the fall of 2010, the pair appeared together as moderators on two political webinars just six months after Badolato was questioned by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office concerning sexual assault allegations made by three women.

On Feb. 26, 2010, according to a sheriff’s report, deputies visited Badolato at his Main Street office because of “numerous reports received over a period of time where females alleged that he had forced himself on them and had sex against their will. We explained to him that none of them had filed charges. However they did file reports about the incidents. We told Badolato that raised some concerns from a law enforcement standpoint.”

Badolato, according to the report, told the deputies the girls came onto him and that he would choose his dates more carefully in the future.

One Sheriff’s Office report alleged Badolato flew young “models” he met on “sugar daddy” websites from out of state to his home, where he promised them $1,000 for photo shoots on the beach, along with use of his house and an expensive car, but didn’t follow through on his promises. Two of the women flown in alleged he sexually assaulted them, one from Wisconsin in 2009, the other from Maine in 2010, though no charges were filed.

One said in a report she sent a text to her husband and father in Wisconsin while in Badolato’s house that read: “Emergency. Get me home.”

Those alleged incidents were not the first time Badolato was accused of sexual misconduct. According to a handwritten report given to a Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office deputy in 2006, one of Badolato’s former housekeepers alleged he would not pay her unless she performed oral sex. The woman also said he sexually assaulted her and told her to “consider this as part of your job. Think of yourself as my dirty slut.” Again, charges were not filed.

Emails obtained by the Herald-Tribune show attempts were made to warn Bannon about associating with Badolato. In 2011, Sarasota resident Joey Barquin began sending emails to associates of Bannon’s in the film industry, as well as to Diane Clohesy, Bannon’s ex-wife, trying to steer Bannon away from investing money with Badolato.

Barquin, who sued the Catholic Church in 1993 for alleged abuse as a child in a Vermont state orphanage and accepted an undisclosed settlement, claims Badolato owes him more than $600,000 from a past business dealing. He spent a lot of time, he says, with Badolato in his Sarasota office and traveling with him to places such as Cuba for business.

At 6:12 p.m., on July 22, 2013, Barquin sent an email to a person in the media industry Bannon was associated with stating “Badolato records all of his phone calls with a Sony m-572-v micro tape player and has his office wired with a GSM micro room device with separate Sim card insertion for remote listening.

“He has been recording Bannon and other associates/individuals/conservative groups etc. etc. for years without there (sic) knowledge.”

As recently as spring 2016, Badolato wrote three stories for Breitbart News — the website Bannon formerly ran — concerning the presidential election, and from 2010 to 2016 Badolato received “associate producer” credits on several conservative documentaries that Bannon made, including one called “Clinton Cash,” which raised questions concerning a uranium deal with Russia that the Clinton Foundation allegedly profited from. Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire and conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer and a former financial backer of Bannon, also received a producer credit on the film.

Badolato was also involved in Bannon’s 2011 film about Sarah Palin called “The Undefeated.” The day before the film was released, Badolato received a “second-chance” letter from the IRS because he had not filed tax returns for the years 2005-2009 and had ignored a summons, records show.

Badolato recently removed any references to his associations with Bannon’s film company from his personal website and no longer touts his work for Breitbart.

Badolato, according to his same website, describes himself as a venture capitalist. He says the companies he has founded have secured more than $700 million in capital before going public. Still, many of his businesses have failed. Years later he has retroactively resigned from the board of several and he has filed twice for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and twice for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, with three of the cases dismissed because he failed to file proper information to the court. Badolato’s 2005 bankruptcy was filed on the day before a RICO Act case alleging stock fraud was set to go to trial and he was among the defendants.

On an amendment for Badolato’s 2005 bankruptcy, Bannon was listed 16th among 136 new creditors who received notice of the filing. The amount of Bannon’s claim was not revealed. At No. 19 on the list was a brokerage firm in Costa Rica called Red Sea Management, which was a “money laundering hub,” according to the Justice Department, and run by a former Sarasota resident named Jonathan Curshen, who is currently serving 20 years in prison for stock fraud. Badaloto’s final bankruptcy filing for the case in 2013 would show he owed $15,631,334.62 to creditors, according to his trustee. The IRS alone had claims for over $700,000.

In the original 2005 filing Badolato claimed he owed $714,519 in unpaid taxes in 1998, 2001 and 2002, and a foreclosure filing on his house shows a lien was placed by the IRS for $517,042.66 of unpaid taxes from 1998. Another IRS document shows that he didn’t file returns from 2005-10 at one point.

Badolato has participated in the State Attorney Worthless Check Diversion Program, records show, and once, according to a notice in the Herald-Tribune, even had his storage locker on Bee Ridge Road auctioned off to satisfy a debt.

And yet Bannon has always seemed to trust Badolato’s business sense.

Money laundering hub

Bannon and Badolato first went into business together in 2003 with a small cosmetics company incorporated in Delaware called the Donna Messenger Corp. Their office was at 7820 South Holiday Drive in Sarasota. Soon, they were on to bigger things.

In 2003 Bannon and Badolato became involved in a nasal spray company based in Englewood called Sinofresh. The company’s prospects were promising and national retail chains such as Walmart agreed to carry the product. Ed McMahon even signed on as spokesman. But the company soon became ensnared in nasty internal squabbles and Badolato was at the center. Badolato’s company — Sargon Capital — helped raise money for Sinofresh to go public and Badolato was retained in a consulting role. Badolato brought in Bannon and Seattle attorney David Otto — who was also involved in the Donna Messenger Corp. — to be part of Sinofresh. Bannon and Otto became board members, but were temporarily removed from the board for their relationships with Badolato.

Charles Fust, CEO of Sinofresh, had a memo drawn in Dec. 2003, which was later included in court, claiming Badolato was “engaging in substantial acts of illegal trading of company securities,” according to a document. Another document filed with the SEC stated “certain board members voted by written consent to remove Bannon and Otto. The decision was made after it became apparent they were not investigating certain improprieties that may have occurred as a result of the actions of Sargon Capital and Andrew Badolato.” Fust later said in a deposition he believed Bannon “failed to examine the matter” because he was “protecting Badolato’s interest.”

Badolato, according to a Herald-Tribune story, spearheaded a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Fust and Sinofresh, though he was not named as a plaintiff. Among the allegations were that Bannon and Otto were improperly removed from the board (they were quickly reinstated) and that Fust used company money to buy an engagement ring. The case was dismissed in August, 2005, but Bannon and the other named plaintiffs continued with a malpractice suit against the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, which had served as counsel to Sinofresh.

The plaintiffs argued that Sinofresh executives received bad advice as it pertained to Bannon and Otto’s removal. The case was settled with Sinofresh receiving $200,000 from the law firm and was released from any fees.

The infighting took a substantial toll. By 2006 Sinofresh announced $1.8 million in losses for the previous year, a 20 percent decline, and Walmart removed the product from its shelves due to poor sales. Bannon and Badolato parted ways as well, but didn’t stay idle.

In 2006 Badolato became chairman of a company called Industrial Biotech Corp (IBOT), which was involved in a “pump and dump” scheme, according to court documents. This particular type of fraud involved manipulating the price of stock by faking trading activity and bribing brokers to buy the stock for wealthy clients at inflated prices. Former Sarasota resident Jonathan Curshen was arrested as part of the scheme for attempting to bribe an undercover FBI officer who was posing as a broker for $19,000.

Under oath in a New York courtroom in 2009 Curshen stated that “I conspired with individuals including Andrew Badolato to commit securities fraud and commercial bribery.”

Badolato was not charged with a crime in the IBOT case. Curshen wrote in an email to the Herald-Tribune that “I believe Badolato cooperated with law enforcement to save himself.” He also wrote that he believes Badolato was wearing a wire during meetings between the two, leading to his arrest in the case.

Curshen owned the brokerage firm in Costa Rica called Red Sea Management, and a document obtained by the Herald-Tribune shows Badolato and his Sarasota attorney, Charles Cleland Jr., had an association with what a Justice Department press release called a “money laundering hub.”

The document shows that on July 21, 2008, Cleland sent a fax to Curshen and Red Sea Management that said “please process requested $50,000 wire transfer to my trust account FBO (for benefit of) Mr. Badolato. Your policies as previously described allow wire transfers from Mr. Badolato’s brokerage account to bank accounts in his name.” Cleland provided his Bank of America account number, the wire routing number and listed the bank’s address as 1605 Main Street, Sarasota.

“The document you have from 2008 is describing a transfer of funds to Badolato that was from the proceeds of IBOT securities,” Curshen wrote in an email to the Herald-Tribune. “As Badolato sold IBOT shares he would transfer some of the proceeds to himself.”

Badolato also had a longstanding business relationship dating back to at least 1998 with former Sarasota resident Gerald C. Parker. In 2011, Parker was among several defendants named in a $30.3 million judgment in Nebraska federal court after three retirees lost millions of dollars. Badolato was not involved with Parker during the Nebraska Ponzi scheme but has been partners with Parker when other substantial judgments were handed down against them in court.

On May 5, 1999, according to court records, a company called Carter Footwear filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania against Badolato, Parker and two companies they were involved with — Investment Management of America and Graystone Worldwide. The complaint was filed under the RICO Act and alleged fraud among other charges.

Carter Footwear alleged that Graystone Worldwide — and Badolato — falsely portrayed Graystone as having “millions of dollars in state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales commitments.” Carter Footwear claimed it incurred damages in excess of $6 million.

The lawsuit, according to a document, arose out of “Badolato’s involvement in an elaborate scheme to defraud Carter as part of an overall plan for Badolato and his cohorts to get rich through a sale of stock that was worthless.” The day before the case was originally set for trial — Sept. 6, 2005 — Badolato filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The convoluted civil case dragged on for nine years and generated more than 1,100 documents before the judge issued a default judgment against Graystone after the firm and its attorneys failed to show up for or participate in the trial, which was held in December 2007. Badolato and Parker eventually agreed to pay $112,500 apiece as a settlement. A document filed in 2009 said both had failed to abide by the agreement and it is not known if they ever did.

Badolato also has had business dealings with a former Tampa resident named Michael Muzio, who is currently serving 13 ½ years in prison for his role among three co-conspirators in a $14.3 million Ponzi scheme in South Florida that targeted nearly 600 Haitians in 2008-09. The scheme originated with Badolato’s sale of a shell company to Muzio, who served as a middleman in the transaction. Muzio, who was facing 190 years in prison, referred to Badolato as “a friend of mine” in a 2010 court document.

The association between Bannon and Badolato reemerged in 2010 — at least on paper. Badolato formed a new company called E3, and on a confidential prospectus obtained by the Herald-Tribune, Bannon was listed as an advisory board member.

Joining Bannon on the board was Oklahoma attorney Lewis B. Moon — a former football player for the Miami Dolphins whom Badolato claimed was a “lifetime member of the national association of the Boy Scouts.” Moon has been arrested multiple times and was banned from practicing law by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which called him an “embarrassment to the legal profession” after finding “convincing evidence” that he falsely identified himself as an ATF agent, engaged in shooting firearms while intoxicated, attempted to extort money and assaulted a fellow lawyer. He then threatened to kill the lawyer and have five men rape and kill his “pretty” daughter.

Moon threatened to stick a pen through the attorney’s neck and put his body through a shredder.

It was straight out of a movie — but not one Bannon would be interested in. By 2010 Bannon was immersed in the world of conservative filmmaking and when the closing credits rolled on his documentaries one name could often be found:

Andrew Badolato.

The producers

Badolato was listed as marketing director on Bannon’s 2011 homage to Palin called “The Undefeated.” The day before the movie was released — July 15, 2011 — Badolato received a certified letter from the IRS because he hadn’t filed his taxes during the years 2005-2009 and he had ignored an IRS summons two months earlier. Eventually he filed for 2005 and 2006. It is not known if he filed for the remaining years.

On Oct. 26, 2012, a Bannon documentary called “District of Corruption” was released and, according Breitbart News, the film “lays bare the lawless and unconstitutional Obama administration and makes the case for more openness, integrity and honesty in government.”

Badolato was given an “associate producer” credit on the “District of Corruption” film. Eight months prior to its release, Badolato received a summons to appear before the IRS because he hadn’t filed his 2010 tax return, court records show, and by Sept. 17, 2012, he still hadn’t complied, missing two meetings with the IRS. He finally complied on November 30, 2012, records show. The Herald-Tribune was unable to verify whether Badolato is current on his taxes.

One of Bannon’s movie companies called Victory Films produced both “The Undefeated” and “District of Corruption” and on his personal website Badolato claimed to have been the vice president of business development and sales for the company. He recently removed the claim from his site.

Badolato was also given an “associate producer” credit on Bannon’s “Clinton Cash” documentary. Bannon and influential conservative donor Rebekah Mercer were listed as “executive producers” on the documentary. The company that produced the film was called Glittering Steel, which was owned by Mercer and Bannon.

Bannon has had other film companies as well, and one was registered with the state of Florida as being based in Sarasota — its address listed as Badaloto’s Main Street office.

Bannon’s Victory Film Productions eventually morphed into what was called VFP III and from Dec. 30, 2010 to April 10, 2017 he listed the Main Street office in Sarasota as the company’s principal address, renewing the company’s registration with the state for six straight years, records show, doing so even on March, 13, 2017 while he was still inside the White House. On his financial disclosure form, he stated he received no income from the company. He also stated the company was based in Tallahassee, not Sarasota.

At one point between 2010 and 2011, both Bannon and Badolato registered the Main Street office with the state for two different companies they were separately involved with, and Badolato wasn’t the only one who shared the address with Bannon.

From 2015 to 2017, records show, Bannon’s film company was even registered at the Main Street address at the same time as the Sarasota High Alumni Letterwinners Association.

Dual residencies

The most defining time of Trump’s presidential campaign occurred in the middle of August 2016, a few months prior to the election.

By then, Trump was projected to be losing to Clinton by double digits and campaign manager Paul Manafort was coming under scrutiny for his alleged dealings with Ukraine.

It also turned out to be a defining time in the relationship between Bannon and Badolato.

First came Aug. 13, 2016. That’s when a fundraiser for Trump took place at the home of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. Influential conservative donor Rebekah Mercer reportedly told Trump he needed to bring Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway on board if he harbored any hopes of winning. Four days later — on Aug. 17, 2016 — Bannon was officially hired. Not only did he run Trump’s campaign, he resurrected it, and to historical proportions as Trump later became the 45th president of the United States.

Shortly before he joined Trump’s campaign, Bannon discovered that the Guardian newspaper of London was planning a story claiming he had been using the vacant Miami address of Diane Clohesy, his ex-wife, to claim Florida residency, even though it was apparent he never lived there and the house had been vacant for some time.

On August 19, 2016 — two days after officially joining Trump’s campaign — Bannon changed course and filed a document with the Sarasota County Elections Office, now claiming Badolato’s Casey Key Road home as his new residence.

The story of Bannon’s new Sarasota County residence made waves for a few days and then disappeared. It would surface again, however, and in an embarrassing way for Trump.

On Oct. 14, 2016, Bannon registered to vote in New York, using an apartment on West 40th Street in Manhattan as his address. On the last afternoon of eligibility he requested an absentee ballot and also indicated New York was where he received his mail.

Indeed, Bannon was now registered to vote in two states: New York and Florida.

When Bannon filled out his New York registration form he left one box empty — box number 12.

Asked in box number 12 for his previous address, Bannon left the line blank. He did not list Badolato’s address.

When asked where his previous state was, he left that line blank, too. He did not list Florida.

Everything else on the form was filled out and signed.

When the Herald-Tribune revealed in a column on Jan. 25, 2017, that Bannon had been registered to vote in two states, it caused a stir nationally as Trump had tweeted on the same morning as the column ran that he “will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states ...”

Later that day the Washington Post reported that a source close to Bannon said he sent Kathy Dent, Sarasota County’s supervisor of elections, an email on Nov. 7 — the day before the election — claiming Bannon was now registered in New York and that he wished to be removed from the Sarasota County voting rolls.

Ron Turner, current Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections, said his office had no record of anyone receiving any correspondence from Bannon.

A silent witness

On Jan. 25, 2017, the day the story broke that Bannon was registered in two states, Turner removed his name from the Sarasota County rolls, which meant Bannon and Badolato were no longer officially roommates.

Three days later, on a momentous Saturday afternoon, former Sarasota County resident Stephen Bannon — a man so powerful he wasn’t required to wear a tie inside the White House — stood at the historic Resolute desk and listened to the first known presidential conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Around the same time that afternoon, Badolato stood in the circular driveway of his weathered million-dollar home on Casey Key Road in a pair of cargo shorts and explained to a sheriff’s deputy he did not steal two antique clay pots from his neighbor.

The deputy took Badolato’s statement and left him to walk back inside and when he reached the front door he was greeted by the strangest of sights: A mannequin, posed just inside the entrance.

The mannequin looked nothing like Stephen Bannon, by the way, if that was ever the intent.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20180 ... -associate
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:07 am

Roger Stone admitted that Bannon and he discussed Assange -Wikileaks in this Daily Caller interview


OPINION: The Treachery Of Steve Bannon

12:18 PM 11/01/2018 | Opinion
The Washington Post reported that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon testified for the grand jury yesterday regarding his communications with me regarding the Wikileaks disclosures in October 2016.

The Special Counsel is reportedly probing whether I somehow directed or urged Wikileaks to release the allegedly hacked e-mails from the DNC in the wake of the Billy Bush accusations against Trump on Oct. 7. I did not — and there is no evidence to the contrary. In fact, Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange announced his release schedule on Oct. 2.

When Assange held a press event Oct. 2 (Oct. 3 U.S. time) and did not release any documents that day as had been widely expected, Bannon e-mailed me asking why.

I had long predicted an October release based on Assange’s June 2016 CNN interview with Anderson Cooper in which he said he had a trove of documents on Hillary and would release them. I had been told this would come in October for months by my source Randy Credico, whom I identified for the House Intelligence Committee.

Then Bannon (or his hatchet man Sam Nunberg) leaked this e-mail exchange to the various media outlets.

On Oct 4, 2016, at 9:25 AM, Steve Bannon < > wrote:
>
> What was that this morning???

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Roger Stone <
Date: Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 9:47 AM
Subject: Re:
To: Steve Bannon < >

Fear. Serious security concern. He thinks they are going to kill him and the London police are standing done.

However –a load every week going forward.

Roger stone
_________________________

The source of Assange’s Security Concerns came from Credico

On March 9, 2018, I wrote on Stone Cold Truth:

When Assange made no disclosures on October 1st, Alex Jones was among those publicly m*therfucking Assange for losing his nerve. Credico told me that Assange had demurred on October 1st because of the concerns of one of his lawyers, Daniel Ellsberg, about threats to Assange’s life if he went forward with the disclosures. Remember, Hillary Clinton actually advocated the use of a drone strike to kill Assange in London, in order to prevent the disclosure of what she knew he had.

Credico told me that Secretary of State John Kerry had astonishingly gone to British Prime Minister Teresa May and asked that Britain rescind its diplomatic recognition of Ecuador for one day, stripping Assange of his asylum, so that United and British authorities could storm the Embassy and seize Assange …

Credico predicted that Assange “would do the right thing” and in fact Assange announced the schedule of a serious of forthcoming disclosures in his October 2nd remarks, which was little noticed by the press. He would follow this schedule to devastating effect.

More importantly my prediction of “a load every week going forward” is based on Assange’s own public announcement hours before-that there would be weekly releases going through and beyond the election and not any communication with Wikileaks or Assange. Politico reported this.

When Bannon’s minion Matt Boyle asked me if what Assange had was “good” I replied it was, based on Credico’s insistence the material was “devastating,” “bombshell” and would “change the race.” This turned out to be right, although — as I have testified — I never knew the content or source of the Wikileaks disclosures in advance.

Bannon’s animus toward me stems from a column I wrote for the Daily Caller arguing that he had outlived his usefulness in the Trump White House and should be fired. The next day, he was.

Bannon also told Rhe Washington Post that the idea to bring the woman victims to the debate was his while the paper trail tells a very different story.

If the grand jury was told that either of my comments to Bannon were based on anything other than information I had already attributed to my source under oath or information reported publicly that day, they were misled.

What I am guilty of is using publicly available information and a solid tip to bluff, posture, hype and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called “politics.” It’s not illegal.

Roger Stone is a legendary Republican political consultant and a veteran of many national Republican presidential campaigns. He’s also the men’s fashion correspondent for The Daily Caller and editor of Stonezone.com.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/01/trea ... ve-bannon/


Why is Matt Boyle, Brannon’s minion atBreitbart important He’s linked to deceased Peter Smith...


Here are Steve Bannon, Matt Boyle and Roger Stone’s emails about Wikileaks - keep in mind that Bannon and Breitbart were being funded by Robert and Rebekah Mercer

Read the Emails: The Trump Campaign and Roger Stone

Newly revealed messages show how the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. sold himself to Trump campaign advisers as a potential conduit to WikiLeaks, which published thousands of emails in 2016 damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Nov. 1, 2018
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump confidant, portrayed himself to top Trump campaign officials as a conduit to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.Jack Taylor/Getty Images


Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump confidant, portrayed himself to top Trump campaign officials as a conduit to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.Jack Taylor/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — When WikiLeaks published a trove of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman a month before the 2016 election, it was widely viewed as an attempt to damage her standing, even as WikiLeaks defended the release as an effort to bring greater transparency to American politics.

We have since learned that the emails were originally hacked by Russian intelligence operatives. What is still not clear is how much Trump campaign advisers knew about the hacks at the time — a subject of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III — or the extent of their interactions with far-right figures eager to undermine Mrs. Clinton.

Emails obtained by The New York Times provide new insight into those connections, as well as efforts by Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump and political operative, to seek funding through the campaign for his projects aimed at hurting Mrs. Clinton. The emails are verbatim, typos and all, save for email addresses deleted to protect the emailers’ privacy.

The Players

Stephen K. Bannon, Trump campaign chairman and co-founder of the far-right Breitbart News, who ran the website until he joined the campaign

Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington editor

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime conservative operative and confidant of President Trump

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks

The Context

A month before the election, Mrs. Clinton looked to be cruising to victory. Mr. Trump’s surrogates, including Mr. Stone, were trying to come up with ways to attack her to help Mr. Trump gain ground.

Mr. Stone had long claimed both publicly and privately that he had foreknowledge of the information that WikiLeaks planned to release about Mrs. Clinton and her political allies. In early October, Mr. Stone predicted on his Twitter account, which was suspended after a string of expletive-laden tweets, that the documents that Mr. Assange promised to make public would hurt Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

Oct. 2, 2016 @rogerjstonejr: “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done.”

Oct. 3, 2016 @rogerjstonejr: “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp”

The Emails

On the night of Oct. 3, Mr. Boyle emailed Mr. Stone. Mr. Assange had scheduled a news conference for the next day where he would announce he was releasing a new cache of documents. The emails show how closely intertwined Breitbart News and the campaign were and how people in Mr. Bannon’s orbit saw Mr. Stone as a direct link to WikiLeaks.

Monday, October 3, 2016
FROM: Matthew Boyle
TO: Roger Stone
EMAIL:

Assange — what’s he got? Hope it’s good.



Thanks,

Matthew Boyle
Washington Political Editor, Breitbart News
http://twitter.com/mboyle1
http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/matthew-boyle

Mr. Stone had apparently been trying to get in touch with Mr. Bannon to tell him about Mr. Assange’s plans. Mr. Boyle, a protégé of Mr. Bannon’s, forwarded to him Mr. Stone’s email. But Mr. Bannon appeared uninterested in engaging.

Monday, October 3, 2016
FROM: Roger Stone
TO: Matthew Boyle
EMAIL:

It is. I’d tell Bannon but he doesn’t call me back.

My book on the TRUMP campaign will be out in Jan.


Many scores will be settled.

R

Monday, October 3, 2016
FROM: Matthew Boyle
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL:
You should call Roger. See below. You didn’t get from me.

Monday, October 3, 2016
FROM: Steve Bannon
TO: Matthew Boyle
EMAIL:
I’ve got important stuff to worry about

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
FROM: Matthew Boyle
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL:

Well clearly he knows what Assange has. I’d say that’s important.

The next morning, Mr. Assange told reporters in Berlin, by teleconference, that he planned to release “significant material” in the coming weeks, including some related to the American presidential election. He said WikiLeaks hoped to publish a trove of documents each week in the coming months. Mr. Assange’s comments were reported extensively in the United States.

Mr. Bannon then contacted Mr. Stone directly, asking for insight into Mr. Assange’s plan. Notably, Mr. Stone did not tell Mr. Bannon anything that Mr. Assange had not said publicly. He did explain that Mr. Assange was concerned about his security, and he said in an interview that Randy Credico, a New York comedian and activist whom Mr. Stone has identified as his source about WikiLeaks, also gave him that information.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
FROM: Steve Bannon
TO: Roger Stone
EMAIL:

What was that this morning???

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
FROM: Roger Stone
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL:
Fear. Serious security concern. He thinks they are going to kill him and the London police are standing done.

However —a load every week going forward.

Roger stone

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
FROM: Steve Bannon
TO: Roger Stone
EMAIL:

He didn’t cut deal w/ clintons???

The final email in the exchange is vintage Stone. He demanded that Trump campaign surrogates convey his accusations, made without evidence, about Bill Clinton’s having a love child named Danney Williams. And he told Mr. Bannon to have the wealthy Republican donor Rebekah Mercer send money to his political organization — a 501(c)(4) group sometimes called a C-4 — which was structured to keep its donors secret. No evidence has emerged that Mr. Bannon asked Ms. Mercer to send money.

In response to Mr. Bannon’s request for insider information into whether Mr. Assange had cut a deal with the Clintons not to release the emails, Mr. Stone said he did not know.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
FROM: Roger Stone
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL:

Don’t think so BUT his lawyer Fishbein is a big democrat .

I know your surrogates are dumb but try to get them to understand Danney Williams case

chick mangled it on CNN this am

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... e-him.html

He goes public in a big way Monday— Drudge report was a premature leak.

I’ve raise $150K for the targeted black digital campaign thru a C-4

Tell Rebecca to send us some $$$

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike

Mark Mazzetti is a Washington investigative correspondent, a job he assumed after covering national security from the Washington bureau for 10 years. He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @MarkMazzettiNYT

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. Previously, she worked at Politico, The New York Post and The New York Daily News. @maggieNYT

Sharon LaFraniere is an investigative reporter. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting on Donald Trump’s connections with Russia. @SharonLNY
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/p ... trump.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 11, 2019 12:10 pm

Accused pedophile George Nader helped Steve Bannon secure a $100,000 speaking gig from a prestigious Washington think tank, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast.

Accused Sex Trafficker Steered $100K Payday to Bannon
Emails show that the indicted operative George Nader and the one-time White House strategist Steve Bannon had a closer connection than previously understood.

Updated 08.11.19 10:34AM ET / Published 08.11.19 5:30AM ET
An accused pedophile helped Steve Bannon secure a $100,000 speaking gig from a prestigious Washington think tank, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast. The emails—between Republican fundraiser and investor Elliott Broidy and Lebanese-American political operative George Nader—shed light on the relationship between Trump’s ex-adviser and a man now in jail awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.

The emails point to a closer relationship between Bannon and Nader than previously known. It’s been widely reported that Nader met with Bannon in the White House during his time as a Trump adviser there. But these emails show they stayed in contact after Bannon left government, and that Nader helped the ex-Breitbart chief secure an appearance with a six-figure payday. A Bannon spokesperson, meanwhile, said Nader was “irrelevant” to Bannon’s speech.

Nader’s work drew the attention of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who questioned him extensively as part of his probe into foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential race. But Mueller wasn’t the only federal prosecutor interested in Nader. On June 3 of this year, he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and charged with possessing child pornography. And just last month, the feds rolled out additional charges for child sex trafficking. Nader is in jail awaiting trial, and has pleaded not guilty.

Broidy, meanwhile, also appears to have drawn attention from the feds: The Daily Beast confirmed in April that one of his former associates has spoken with FBI agents about his business dealings.

The emails between Nader and Broidy, sent in September and October 2017, involve arrangements for a conference on Qatar hosted by the Hudson Institute. Broidy, then seeking business from the government of the United Arab Emirates, was running a quiet public relations campaign designed to undermine the Qatari government’s influence in Washington and with American Jewish leaders. He was particularly incensed that Nick Muzin, a former staffer to Sen. Ted Cruz with deep ties to Jewish leaders, had signed on to lobby for the government of Qatar. They’d run in the same tight-knit circle of Jewish Republicans and Broidy saw Muzin as a traitor. The country’s connections to Iran—with which it shares a huge gas field—have long angered many in the pro-Israel community. And its ownership of Al Jazeera also fuels opposition from many supporters of Israel.

“I want to Puke,” he wrote in an email to his wife on Sept. 6. “What a moron.”

“Is this guy a self-hating Jew or an idiot?” she replied. “What can you do?”

Just a few months earlier, the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates started a blockade of Qatar. It was a bid to isolate the peninsular nation, which those governments blamed for funding terrorism. The Qataris kicked off a well-funded lobbying effort to tell their side of the story in Washington and stay in the Trump administration’s good graces. Muzin’s outreach to Jewish leaders—which Broidy sought to countervail—was part of the Qataris’ effort to shore up support.

As part of Broidy’s project, he helped arrange a conference to be held at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank known for its foreign policy work. The conference, set for October of 2017, would make the case against Qatar.

In September, Broidy communicated with Nader—whom he had known since Trump’s inauguration—about those plans. And on Sept. 22, Nader emailed Broidy about getting Bannon involved [all punctuation sic].

“Hope all is going well with you and the Conference,” Nader wrote. “Send me please an update[.] Steve is interested in participating.”

Nader then shared Bannon’s email with Broidy.

“Send him pls a letter to brief him…on the conference, what you like him to do and when,” Nader continued. “You should get him key time and all by himself with proper guy to introduce him. Let me know what you have in mind!”

Two days later, Broidy sent Nader a curious email. It opened with the words “Dear Steve,” and then described the plans for the conference. “I would love to have you as one of the keynote speakers,” Broidy wrote in the email sent to Nader but addressed to Bannon. The email included a draft of the conference’s agenda. It appears Broidy wanted Nader to proof-read the invitation before it went to Bannon, who had left the White House in August 2017.

On Sept. 29, event organizers circulated a draft of a Save-the-Date invitation for the conference. Bannon’s name wasn’t on it.

“You need to add please Steve Bannon,” Nader wrote in an email to Broidy. “He is as important if not more to that invitation and kindly send me too a draft of the full program as is for now[.]”

Two weeks later, Bannon was in.

“Still working on many details,” Broidy wrote to Nader on Oct. 17. “Will get schedule to you when ready. Steve is on board, FYI $100k honorarium.”

Five days later, Broidy was still keeping Nader looped in on Bannon’s participation. He forwarded Nader an email he sent directly to Bannon that day. “I am very excited about your appearance at the conference tomorrow,” he wrote in the email to Bannon that he forwarded to Nader. “George asked me to resend some talking points. See you then.”

A person close to Bannon said that the two men got to know each other better after Bannon left the White House, and that Nader was one of many people who approached Bannon on behalf of event organizers about making speeches.

But a Bannon spokesperson discounted Nader’s role in Bannon’s speech.

“This is just one of many speaking requests Mr. Bannon receives,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Hudson Institute is a highly respected think tank, and because of that, he accepted an invitation with others such as Sen. Cotton and Gen. Petraeus. George Nader was irrelevant; neither he nor anyone has influenced Mr. Bannon’s longtime position on the condemnation of Qatar as an urgent threat to Israel: a state sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other Islamic terror organizations.”

The conference went forward, largely as planned, and a source familiar with it confirmed that Bannon received the $100,000 payment. It featured a host of luminaries, including Gen. David Petraeus; Zalmay Khalilzad, who later became the State Department’s Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation; Democratic and Republican members of the House of Representatives; and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. Bannon, in his speech, was characteristically bombastic and praised the blockade.

“I think the single most important thing that’s happening in the world is the situation in Qatar,” he said. “What’s happening in Qatar is every bit as important as what’s happening in North Korea.”

A lawyer for Nader declined to comment for this story. Spokespersons for Broidy and Bannon declined to comment as well.

The Hudson Institute stands by its work.

“Hudson has held countless panels and produced reports on the Middle East, including Qatar and the pernicious impact of the Muslim Brotherhood specifically,” said a statement the Institute shared with The Daily Beast. “We believe our criticisms and analysis of Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood are still valid.”

A source close to Hudson said Bannon’s honorarium was on par with what other main speakers received.

In an ironic twist, Bannon has since gotten to know Muzin—Broidy’s old nemesis—and discussed going into business with him. The Daily Beast reported earlier this year that Muzin pitched an executive at Juul, the e-cigarette company, on his lobbying services and said Bannon would be able to help out with his influence efforts. Juul didn’t take them up on the offer.

For Broidy and Nader, the weeks before the Hudson conference were a comparatively simple time. Two months after the event, hackers stole troves of emails Broidy had sent and received. The emails were fodder for a host of news stories about his business dealings and relationships with foreign government officials, including officials looking to influence Trumpworld. Many of Nader’s communications with Broidy have also become public since the hack. And numerous reports have revealed Nader’s work as a gatekeeper between Gulf dignitaries and denizens of Trumpworld. The emails The Daily Beast obtained indicate that, on at least one occasion, he also helped connect a Republican financier to Bannon.

Broidy has alleged in court that the Qatari government sponsored the hacks. The Qataris say the allegations are baseless, and the litigation is underway.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-s ... 00k-payday
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 29, 2019 9:06 am

Legal Fight Brewing Over Steve Bannon’s Academy in Italian Monastery
August 27, 2019 CAIN BURDEAU
Image
Steve Bannon wants to run an academy for Western, Judaeo-Christian “culture warriors” at the 13th century Trisulti Charterhouse monastery in the hills south of Rome. (Photo by CAIN BURDEAU/Courthouse News Service)
TRISULTI CHARTERHOUSE, Italy (CN) – When Steve Bannon comes to Italy, he likes to make his way to this walled monastery hidden away from the world in the mountains south of Rome. Bannon, the globetrotting advocate of right-wing nationalism and former chief strategist for candidate and then President Donald Trump, has ambitions for this magnificent relic of medieval monastic life: He sees the old abbey one day functioning as his “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West,” a place where he can mold cultural and political “gladiators” to carry out his fight against liberal elites, Islam and socialists.

Think of it as a cauldron from which mini-Bannons and mini-Trumps might be released onto the world with a seal of approval to lead nationalist causes.

Bannon’s project is moving ahead despite the Italian culture minister’s move in May to revoke a license to operate the monastery for 19 years. The license was awarded to a conservative religious think tank tied to Bannon. Now a legal fight appears set to take place.

“The ministry has no grounds whatsoever to revoke the license or to annul the lease,” said Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, the think tank that runs the monastery.

Harnwell called Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli’s actions “politically motivated.” Bonisoli is a member of the 5-Star Movement, an anti-establishment party with left-wing tendencies.

“I am looking forward to clearing our name and fighting as forcefully as possible when this gets to court,” Harnwell said inside the monastery in an interview with Courthouse News. He expected any legal fight to take a long time, possibly years, considering Italy’s complicated legal system.

The ministry charged that Harnwell’s think tank, which took possession of the monastery in January, has failed to pay rent and perform renovations as promised. Harnwell dismissed those allegations as untrue.

“If they [the ministry] don’t go to court, we will,” Harnwell said. “They’ve damaged our image.”

The ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. As of July, Harnwell said the ministry had not formally ordered his institute to leave the premises.

In the meantime, Harnwell said Bannon’s visions for a nationalist academy are moving forward. He said his institute will provide more information about the academy’s courses, curriculum and degrees this autumn.


Benjamin Harnwell makes a point during a wide-ranging discussion inside the Trisulti Charterhouse monastery. (Photo by CAIN BURDEAU/Courthouse News Service)
It’s not hard to imagine Bannon’s academy taking shape inside the cloister, churches, courtyards and nooks and crannies of the Trisulti Charterhouse, a 13th-century monastery.

In recent years as the monastery’s remaining monks died, the Italian government sought a new purpose for the charterhouse, which is owned by the Italian state and open to the public. The monks here tended to a prodigious collection of medicinal herbs and concocted sambuca, a sweet anise-flavored liqueur.

“For many years now it had lost its religious function,” said Giorgio Liberatori, an architect in the nearby town of Collepardo. “It was inevitable that it had to change hands.”

Liberatori said he and others in Collepardo are not opposed to Bannon’s academy taking up quarters in the monastery. He said no one else had showed much interest in the charterhouse. As for Bannon and his radical ideas, he said time would tell how having his academy close to Collepardo might affect the town. But he added: “The average citizen doesn’t care.”

Harnwell said Bannon’s academy will be housed in the former cloister, a secluded area where monks once lived in simple rooms, engrossed in prayer and silence.

Harnwell said about 1,500 people have applied, but there is space now for only about 25 students. In time, though, there could be room for as many 350 students, he said.

“Like the old monastic orders — the religious orders — would form a person into a monk, Steve wants to form someone who comes here and turn them into a gladiator,” Harnwell said. “Steve’s expression is that this is a gladiator school for culture warriors.”

These prospective “culture warriors” would be people who feel intuitively that Judeo-Christian ideas are under attack,” Harnwell said.

In a broad-ranging interview, Harnwell — a 43-year-old Englishman of working-class roots who’s worked as a Conservative Party political aide in the House of Commons and the European Parliament — went into depth about Bannon’s self-defines populist nationalist worldview, and his own views, which he characterized as libertarian and “anarcho-capitalist.”

This remote Italian monastery, where the occasional chime of bells breaks the silence, is an unlikely setting for an instruction into the thinking not only of Bannon but of Trump, who adheres to Bannon’s theories.

Harnwell denounced Islam, calling it a dangerous militant religion bent on imposing its will on others. He praised far-right leaders Britain’s Nigel Farage, who championed Brexit, and Matteo Salvini, Italy’s anti-immigrant interior minister. Salvini, he said, was Italy’s “savior.”

He called global warming a fairy tale. On government, he said it needs to be stripped away to allow capitalism to flourish. On wealth, he said there was too much envy of the rich and called policies to redistribute wealth a disaster.

An unabashed admirer of Bannon, Harnwell called him “the smartest guy” he’d ever met “without anyone being a close second.”

He said Bannon’s fundamental insight is to see politics not in a “pure left and right paradigm” but “a vertical paradigm” where “the ordinary working guy [is] being shafted by the working elites.”

“I would say that Steve’s view basically is that the little guy should have a seat at the table,” Harnwell said.

He said Trump was “the first person to win election explicitly on the Bannon paradigm” rather than a left-right paradigm. “That’s Steve’s genius,” he said.

Bannon aims to make government work for the ordinary person, Harnwell said. That, according to Bannon, is done by “deconstructing” an “administrative state” that benefits only so-called elites: politicians, financiers, intellectuals, contractors, university professors and others who gain their wealth through government policies designed to benefit the elite class.

“The state exists not to help the ordinary working guy but to help first and foremost, to benefit, the people who comprise of it and work for it,” Harnwell said. “It’s immoral.


A monk’s spare bedroom inside the Trisulti Charterhouse. (Photo by CAIN BURDEAU/Courthouse News Service)
“The elites have made themselves rich at your expense,” he said. “That’s not a Marxist paradigm here. It’s an argument that government has become too big and exists to promote the welfare of the people who work for it and the people who run it rather than the citizens.”

Harnwell said Bannon wants government to get out of people’s lives.

“Before the First World War, the only relationship most people had with the federal government was when they posted a letter,” he said. “Now it is omnipresent.”

He said the United States has “a unique role to play on the world stage” because it promotes liberty.

“So it is imperative, if you believe in liberty as I do, that that American experiment succeeds, that liberty can long endure on the face of the earth,” he said.

Harnwell said left-wing parties have abandoned their principle of “representing the ordinary worker.” For example, he said left-wing politicians now support immigrants over workers in their own countries. By doing that, he said, left-wing politicians are supporting people who will show up in a country and undercut that country’s manual workers.

“That’s not a left-wing party,” he said. He charged “the professional leftist party” doesn’t care about workers.

He argued that societies based around left-wing ideas are failures.

“All countries that are founded explicitly on social justice, economic justice principles are basket cases, empirically,” he said, and cited the example of Venezuela.

Yet he sees socialism on the rise in the West.

“Since the Second World War, I think society and the West has been shifting one degree to the left every generation,” he said.

“Here’s the irony, it’s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is the global visible failure of communism in practice as a means of managing an economy, that those ideas then, basically unopposed, via, I think, national educating system enter the bloodstream of the culture,” he said.

“So most young people, say anyone who is under 25, will hold communist views, unless for some reason they have explicitly taken a position to avoiding that.”

Harnwell dismissed criticisms that Bannon is promoting racist and Fascist views.

“Steve points out Fascists worship the state,” he said. By contrast, he said Bannon wants the state to be curtailed. Yet at the same time, Harnwell said, Bannon wants the state “to be strong enough to protect its national integrity.”

In this view, a country “has the right and the duty” to stop “people coming in on a large scale and being trafficked in” across borders. he said. “The [U.S.] border is too porous.”

He said it was proper and moral to stop immigrants. “I don’t believe that’s against the principles of the Judeo-Christian West to do so.”

On Africa and its deep problems, which prompt so many people to look for refuge in Europe, he said the continent needs to adopt the Western model.

“We know in the West how to take people out of poverty. It’s not through socialist world distribution, it’s through promoting societies built on the rule of law, having independent judiciaries, having solid property rights as the bedrock of your society, of having an entrepreneurial society,” he said. “Africa is incredibly resource-rich. What it needs to do is imitate the West if it wants to move out of poverty. You can make that transformation in one or two generations if you embrace the right principles.”

He said many African nations suffer from “a strong element of cultural Marxism” that “blended into the bloodstream during the anti-colonial period.”


Benjamin Harnwell enters a dining hall at the Trisulti Charterhouse. (Photo by CAIN BURDEAU/Courthouse News Service)
Harnwell, like Bannon, sees Islam as a major threat to the West.

He said the Prophet Muhammad was militant and anything but moderate. “Islam was on the attack for centuries from day one,” he said. “It’s clear that Islam has designs on Christendom.

“All major world religions, all of them apart from the Muslim religion, have a variation of the Golden Rule in them,” he said. “There is not a variation for the Golden Rule in the Muslim religion.

“Does Islam believe that the penalty for apostasy is death and does it believe that because that is what Muhammad said? Well, the answer is yes and yes,” he said. “It doesn’t sound so moderate to me.”

He added: “The majority of Muslims are moderate. But they are moderate because they choose not to implement certain key elements of their own religion in their personal lives.”

Asked about other threats he sees, Harnwell cited “militant secularism” because it “does not tolerate any discussion of Christian god in the political space.” He said humanity needs “Christian faith” to be able to “survive and indeed thrive.”

He then called “out-of-control” immigration an “existential threat.” He said that low birth rates in the West and increased immigration pose a “demographic challenge” that he sees as “an existential threat.”

He called the “debt structure” and “welfare commitments” of Western societies existential threats too.

“This form of capitalism which isn’t capitalism, that benefits the elites to the detriment of the ordinary worker, that is also an existential threat,” he said.

What about climate change?

“I would put anthropological climate change in the same category as I would put the tooth fairy and unicorns and Father Christmas and the abominable snowman,” he said.

He denied that science has proved climate change is happening.

“I would cite the data as the suggestion that anthropological climate change hasn’t been proven,” he said.

He said most scientists are supporting the idea of climate change out of financial interests.

They “get their money one way or another through government, and government loves the idea of climate change because it can put its tentacles into every aspect of society,” he said. “The government can get everywhere on the back of this.”

What about environmental degradation more generally?

His solution was putting more of the earth into private hands.

“Again, property rights,” he said. “What we tend to see is what we know in philosophy as the tragedy of the commons. It’s those resources which have no ownership, probably for ideological reasons, that are then exploited. People tend to care about the property they own.”

He dismissed concerns about growing inequality.

“This is why the socialists screw up on everything, because they see the economic pie as a given,” he said. “And therefore if you want poor people to have more, you’ve got to take more money from the rich and give it to the poor as a straight transfer. All that is going to do over the long term is take wealth out of the hands of people who know how to create it and give it to people who will only consume it. That’s not going make your economic territory richer.”

He said the notion that the economic pie cannot grow is mistaken.

“It doesn’t really matter, the inequality between say the top decimal and the poorest decimal,” he said. “The issue is: Do the poor have enough money to meet their needs and to improve their living condition generation by generation?

“Can you please tell me what the injustice is of letting some people who happen to be wealth creators keep more of their own property? Why is that considered morally wrong?”

He said that his views, and Bannon’s, are not far-right but echo longstanding centrist and conservative ideas. He said they are viewed as far right and extreme right because the media has demonized conservative ideas.

“What 50 years ago would have been considered centrist is now considered to be right wing, if not far right,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any great coalescence around extreme-right or far-right politics. I think it’s basically where most people would have been around the 1950s.”

He shrugged off accusations that Bannon, Trump and he are promoting racist ideas.

“Racist, anti-Semite, Fascist – Nazi, I’ve been called as well, publicly,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me at all. I learned it from Steve: Don’t give a shit about what people say about you. Just get on with what you have to do.”

He then set off for a tour of the monastery — kneeling as he went before altars inside the monastery.

All the while, he praised Bannon.

“It’s a school which is designed in his image and likeness,” he said.

The bells rang and the hour of lunch had arrived.

(Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.)
https://www.courthousenews.com/legal-fi ... monastery/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 11, 2019 10:14 am

Olivier Bonnel

L'académie des "défenseurs de l'Occident judéo-chrétien" que Steve Bannon voulait ouvrir dans une ancienne chartreuse au sud de #Rome ne se fera pas
https://twitter.com/Obonnel/status/1182600649025949696


per Google translate:
The academy of "defenders of the Judeo-Christian West" that Steve Bannon wanted to open in an old Carthusian monastery south of #Rome will not happen


Magnifique!

Heartbreaking to see his dream of a Nazi Hogwarts just fall apart like this.

https://twitter.com/Obonnel/status/1182600649025949696
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby Jerky » Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:15 pm

Steve Bannon, a man who made his bones launching propaganda lies about how "the left" (or anyone who isn't as full-blown fascist as his ideal) is jam-packed with devil-worshiping baby-eating witches and warlocks, who HIMSELF is (at the very least) an avid fan of bonafide occultist Julius Evola (among others) and his works, wanted to set up an "academy" in an Italian monastery where he could train up True Believing apostles to go out into the world and deliver the Good News of... what, exactly?

Does this ridiculous enterprise not strike anyone else here as sort of overtly reminiscent of what none other than Aleister Fucking Crowley attempted in the Italian town of Cefalu, where he used an old monastery to set up his own Abbey of Thelema?!

Anyway, the people charged with maintaining that place just dodged a bullet. I don't think plumbing of such an advanced vintage would have been able to tolerate the sudden introduction of highly acidic slurry of dissolved prostitute body parts. I hear the pH on that shit is through the ROOF!

J.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:32 pm

JUDGMENT DAY
Bannon Teams Up With Chinese Group That Thinks Trump Will Bring on End-Times
Steve Bannon made a fiercely anti-China movie for some of the Chinese government’s biggest foes.

Will Sommer
Published 10.19.19 5:10AM ET

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos Getty/Courtesy Claws of The Red Dragon
After trying to launch his own cryptocurrency and failing to turn an Italian monastery into a training camp for Europe’s far right, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has a new plan: teaming up with a Chinese spiritual movement that reportedly believes Trump will bring about Judgment Day.

On Saturday night, viewers of the rabidly pro-Trump cable news channel One America News Network will witness the premiere of Bannon’s latest effort, a ripped-from-the-headlines political thriller modeled after the real-life legal battle that ensued following the arrest of an executive for Chinese tech company Huawei in Canada.

Bannon didn’t exact for subtlety as the executive producer of the film, Claws of the Red Dragon. Chinese communist officials in the movie meet in shadowy rooms to discuss the utmost importance of their “secret plan,” while an intrepid reporter investigating Huawei stand-in “Huaxing” finds a dead cat left on her car in warning. In a Bannonian touch at the end, viewers are left with an Edmund Burke quote warning that evil triumphs when “good men do nothing.”

The message is obvious: Chinese executives and officials are intent on undermining other countries, and Western institutions have been too cowardly or greedy to stand up to them.


What will be less clear to OANN’s viewers is that the movie’s funder, digital video company New Tang Dynasty, is closely tied to a spiritual movement that reportedly believes Donald Trump, Bannon’s former boss, will help usher in the end times.

New Tang Dynasty is part of the Epoch Media Group, a collection of far-right media outlets linked to Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement that has been repressed by the Chinese government. The group’s members apparently now see Trump’s presidency and Chinese trade war as a fateful moment.

In August, NBC News reported on the company’s attempts through its newspaper, The Epoch Times, to promote Trump through huge Facebook ad buys and increased links to pro-Trump officials and conservative media.

But Falun Gong practitioners also see Trump as more than just a convenient political ally, according to the NBC report. Former members of Falun Gong told NBC News that the group’s adherents “think the world is headed toward a judgment day” in which communists are going “to a kind of hell.”

“Trump is viewed as a key ally in the anti-communist fight,” the NBC News report reads.

Bannon, who said he helped expand the film’s distribution, plans to expand it to Brazil, Italy, and Poland. Bannon wasn’t concerned about his new ally’s reportedly apocalyptic views of Trump.

“If they think Donald Trump is something special, then they think Donald Trump is something special,” he said. “It’s kind of like some of the deplorables,’ right?”

Teaming up with the Epoch Times may be unusual, but it makes sense for Bannon, who has repeatedly railed against Chinese trade practices and economic influence.

The film is light on references to the Epoch Times, and appears to contain no references to Falun Gong, aside from a throwaway line about the harsh treatment doled to some Chinese citizens.

At one point, the reporter character picks up a copy of a free Chinese-government-funded newspaper and complains about its lack of accuracy. In the background, an Epoch Times newspaper box stands as a silent point of comparison.

OANN president Charles Herring told The Daily Beast that his company doesn’t have any business relationship with New Tang Dynasty.

“One America News has extensively reported on espionage and cyber warfare concerns against the United States by Huawei and the Chinese Government,” Herring said in a statement. “Leading experts and policy makers on both sides of the aisle argue that implementation of 5G technology using American infrastructure suppliers is critical to protecting US national security interests. Claws of the Red Dragon highlights these concerns and the different interests and conflicts in fundamental beliefs involved.”

New Tang Dynasty and Bannon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Claws ends with Canada poised on the brink of a clash with China, with Canadian citizens arrested in China in retaliation for the Huaxing executive’s own detention (as happened in the real world). A Canadian Huaxing executive contemplates suicide, while his girlfriend, the reporter, sees her parents arrested in China as retaliation for her articles exposing Canada’s efforts to appease the Chinese government.

Bannon described the Epoch Times group as “scrappy.”

“Their object is to be the leading conservative news sources in the United States in the next five years,” Bannon said.

While OANN has struggled to get anywhere near rival Fox News’ viewership number, the Claws broadcast on Saturday could have one notable viewer: Trump himself. The president has frequently praised OANN amid his own clashes with Fox News, increasingly tweeting about what he’s watching on the channel.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bannon-te ... ref=scroll
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 29, 2019 8:48 am

Exclusive: Steve Bannon’s $1 million deal linked to a Chinese billionaire
Jonathan Swan, Erica Pandey
1 hour ago
The mystery of who's funding Steve Bannon's work has been at least partly solved: Guo Media, a company linked to a controversial Chinese billionaire, has contracted Bannon for at least $1 million for “strategic consulting services,” according to contracts obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The billionaire fugitive — a man named Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok — is embroiled in the U.S.-China conflict. He’s a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party and is reportedly a member at Mar-a-Lago. He’s on China’s most-wanted list for alleged bribery, fraud and money laundering, per the New York Times (he strongly denies the allegations).

Guo has been living in New York while he awaits a decision on his U.S. asylum application. And the Chinese government has asked the Trump administration to extradite him.
Bannon declined to comment.
The first contract, signed between Bannon and Guo Media, gives Bannon $1 million for one year of consulting services beginning in August 2018.

Bannon is specifically contracted to introduce Guo Media to “media personalities,” and advise the company on “industry standards.”
Bannon has made China one of his top issues since leaving the White House in the summer of 2017.
The second contract, which was set to begin in August 2019 and is unsigned, offered Bannon $1 million for consulting and set more specific expectations.

In addition to the services requested in the first contract, the second would have required Bannon to serve as senior editor for G News — Guo Media’s news arm — and help to elevate G News as a credible source of news on China.
Guo Media is owned by Saraca Media Group, a company incorporated in Delaware, according to the contracts. Per a March 2019 tax filing, the president and director of Saraca was an individual named Han Chunguang.

“[I]t is my understanding that given Mr. Bannon's cross-border financial expertise at Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale, Saraca previously retained him for strategic advisory work regarding media investments, M&A, joint ventures, and cryptocurrencies,” Daniel Podhaskie, a spokesperson for Guo, tells Axios in an email statement.

“Mr. Bannon's work in these areas was complete and he is currently not retained. Mr. Guo had no involvement in him being retained or his work for Saraca.”
“Mr. Guo has no financial interest in Saraca Media Group or its media platform known as ‘Guo Media.’ Mr. Guo is merely the face of Guo Media and was requested by Saraca to act in this capacity given Mr. Guo’s outspoken criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Mr. Guo agreed to work with Saraca, but insisted that he not be compensated given his prior emphasis that his fight against the CCP is not about money. His entire goal has been to take down the CCP and free his fellow countrymen in China.”
As to China's allegations, "the reality is that Mr. Guo is the most wanted person in China because of his outspoken criticism of the Chinese Communist Party; desire to eliminate the CCP’s stranglehold on the Chinese people and bring the rule of law to China," Podhaskie said.
The backstory: Guo and Bannon first met in October 2017, and the two have had numerous meetings since then, the New York Times’ David Barboza reports. Last year, they announced the joint launch of a $100 million “Rule of Law Fund” to investigate the deaths and disappearances of Chinese public figures.

Guo told Barboza, “We both naturally despise the Chinese Communist Party. That’s why we’ve become partners.”
Bannon also told the Hill he has recorded a radio show out of Guo’s New York apartment.
Although Guo’s spokesperson says the billionaire has no financial stake in Guo Media, Guo has a pervasive presence that dominates the platform.

There’s a tab on the G News website devoted to Guo and his near-daily video commentary on China. Bannon has his own section, too.
He regularly appears in Guo Media’s broadcasts and has posted nearly 6,000 times to his profile on Guo Media’s platform.
Read the contracts:
https://www.axios.com/steve-bannon-cont ... ae5aa.html


SonicG » Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:44 pm wrote:Two very interesting immigration moves...Doing the bidding of China and Russia?

Trump sought dissident's expulsion after hand-delivered letter from China – report
Wall Street Journal says the US president called for Guo Wengui’s deportation after casino owner Steve Wynn brought letter from Beijing government

Donald Trump called for the deportation of a Chinese dissident living in the US, after receiving a request from Beijing hand-delivered by a casino owner with business interests in China, according to a US report.

The Wall Street Journal described a Chinese government attempt to put pressure on Guo Wengui, a real estate tycoon living in exile in New York, to halt his allegations of corruption in high places in China.


Guo Wengui, the maverick Chinese billionaire who threatens to crash Xi's party
Read more
A group of officials from China’s ministry of state security, who entered the US on visas that did not allow them to conduct official business, visited Guo in his New York apartment in May, and used veiled threats in an attempt to persuade Guo to stop his accusatory tweets, which have a wide following in China, and return home. Guo shrugged off the pressure and made a recording of his conversation with the officials, part of which he posted online.

After that visit, FBI agents confronted the Chinese officials at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. The Chinese visitors first claimed to be cultural diplomats and then admitted they were security officials. The agents warned them they were violating the terms of their visa and told them to leave the country.

However, two days later, just before leaving the country, the Chinese officials paid a second visit to Guo, triggering a debate within the administration over whether they should be arrested. FBI agents were posted at John F Kennedy airport ready to carry out the arrests before the officials boarded their flight, but they were not made, after the state department argued it could trigger a diplomatic crisis.

Guo has filed an application for political asylum in the US, which is pending. But according to the Journal’s account, Trump called for Guo’s deportation in a discussion on policy towards China, describing him as a “criminal” at an Oval Office policy meeting in June, on the basis of a letter from Beijing accusing him of serious crimes.

The report said the letter had been hand-delivered to him at a private dinner by Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas casino magnate and Republican National Committee finance chairman with interests in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, for which Wynn relies on Beijing for licensing.

The marketing director for Wynn Resorts Ltd, Michael Weaver, told the Journal in a written statement: “[T]hat report regarding Mr Wynn is false. Beyond that, he doesn’t have any comment.”

Weaver did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on what part of the story was false and whether Wynn had ever delivered a letter from the Chinese government to Trump.

The Journal report said that aides tried to persuade Trump out of going ahead with Guo’s deportation, noting he was a member of the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. The aides later ensured that the deportation would not go ahead.

There was no immediate response from the White House or the state department to a request to comment on the report. A state department representative told the Journal: “Decisions on these kinds of matters are based on interagency consensus.”

A justice department representative said: “It is a criminal offense for an individual, other than a diplomatic or consular officer or attache, to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign power without prior notification to the attorney general.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... are_btn_fb


State Department Reportedly Revokes Visa Of Magnitsky Act Campaigner

The State Department has reportedly revoked a visa for British citizen Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager turned human rights activist responsible for the Magnitsky Act. The 2012 U.S. law is aimed at punishing Russian officials believed responsible for the death in a Moscow prison of Sergei Magnitsky, who was allegedly beaten and denied medical care.

The canceling of Browder's visa came on the same day that the Kremlin issued yet another international arrest warrant for him via Interpol.

The Magnitsky Act, which freezes the assets and bans visas for certain Russians, including those close to Vladimir Putin, "touched off a nasty confrontation with the Kremlin, and the two sides have been trying ever since to undermine the credibility of the other. Recently, however, Russian prosecutors have taken that effort to a remarkable new level, claiming that Mr. Magnitsky was actually murdered by Mr. Browder," according to The New York Times.

Browder, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, was once the largest private foreign investor in Russia. Magnitsky was his accountant and attorney. You can hear him here in a July interview with NPR, with a thorough take here by NPR's Miles Parks.

As NPR's Greg Myre reported in July:

"The Magnitsky Act re-emerged has a front-burner topic ... in connection with the investigations surrounding President Trump's campaign and possible links to Russian meddling in last year's presidential race.
"Russia has lobbied hard for repeal of the act. That's what Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya said she was doing when she met with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York."
EUobserver writes that as in the previous four "Red Notices" rejected by Interpol, the latest such notice exploits a loophole called a "diffusion notice."

According to the websites:

"Interpol rejected them all on grounds that they were politically motivated, but Interpol member states can file diffusions without any oversight.
"The diffusions, which are circulated to all members, often stay in national police databases even if Interpol later deletes them from its central system."
The latest move by Russia has angered defenders of Browder, including Michael McFaul, the ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama from 2012-2014.

McFaul tweeted "this is outrageous" and called on President Trump and the State Department to "fix this now."
McFaul's concern was picked up by Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who was fired earlier this year by President Trump. Bharara "seconded" McFaul in the retweet, adding in a subsequent tweet that Russia's allegation that Browder may have killed Magnitsky is a "farce."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... campaigner


seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:41 am wrote::evilgrin

Chinese Billionaire Wallops Roger Stone With $100 Million Defamation Suit Over His Infowars Screeds

Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, is now being sued for defamation by a Chinese billionaire.

Miami New Times noted that Stone has had problems in the past with “keeping his mouth shut." The most recent consequence is a hefty $100 million lawsuit filed by Guo Wengui, known in America as “Miles Kwok,” who is suing in Miami federal court after Stone slammed him on Infowars.

Stone alleged that Guo was laundering money for Hillary Clinton and Steve Bannon.

“Stone has publicly stated that Plaintiff Guo has been ‘found guilty’ and ‘convicted’ of financial crimes in the United States—this is not true,” the lawsuit states. “Stone has publicly accused Plaintiff Guo of violating U.S. election law by making political donations to Hillary Clinton and financing a presidential run by Steven Bannon—this is not true. Mr. Stone should be held to account for these and other falsehoods about Mr. Guo.”

When asked about the allegations, Stone called them “a crock of sh*t.”

“This is essentially a political lawsuit and is a Kwok of Schiff,” Stone told the New Times. “None of my reporting rises to the level of defamation. Mr. Kwok tweeted himself about his support for Steve Bannon’s projects, and now he’s suing me for reporting on it?… While I doubt this meritless suit will ever get to trial, my attorneys are very anxious to question Mr. Kwok about his relationship with both Chinese and American intelligence agencies.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of defamation suits against Infowars. The family of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich is suing Fox News for continuously alleging that Rich was killed by the Clintons for political reasons—a conspiracy theory that came from Infowars and Rush Limbaugh. A Massachusetts man is suing Infowars after the site incorrectly claimed he was the Parkland shooter. Another man is suing after he was accused of staging the Unite the Right car attack for the “deep state.” And Chobani is suing Infowars for falsely alleging the yogurt company is linked to a sexual assault case.

While the New Times report conceded that Guo is a “mysterious figure” and came to the U.S. fleeing corruption charges in China, Guo claimed the charges against him are false and are retaliation for calling out corruption in the Chinese government.

Guo has begun live-streaming online to troll high-ranking Chinese officials he accuses of corruption.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-polit ... t-over-his


seemslikeadream » Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:08 am wrote:
China embraces its surveillance state. The US pretends it doesn’t have one
David Carrol
l4 hours ago

Shown is a security camera in Philadelphia, Monday, June 24, 2019.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke

America is doing a better job of camouflaging its surveillance state so it can go on pretending to be the land of the free.
At least China is honest about its surveillance dystopia. In Trump’s America, we pretend Palantir isn’t worse.

The parallels between how the two countries control their minority populations via technology are chilling. In China, no one has yet to emerge from the Communist Party’s largest concentration camps (sorry, “re-education” camps) in the northwest province of Xinjiang, said to be holding 1 million people. Suspected subversives are captured by an all-pervasive digital dragnet integrated with Smart City data and a grid of checkpoints, which creates a prison state to oppress Islam. The checkpoints allow police to ensure that that the Muslim ethnic minority of Uighurs have a government app installed on their smartphones that transmits all their data, allowing law enforcement to patrol Islamic religious practices.

Meanwhile, ethnic divisions are cleaving America into a democracy on the brink. Righteous outrage opposes cultish defense over the semantics of “concentration camps” here on the US/Mexico border, fueling a furious debate over ongoing family separation and torture-grade conditions for unaccompanied children. The US immigration apparatus has failed to maintain adequate records of detainees and separations, and proposals of forced DNA sampling have been floated. Our nation’s cruelty-as-deterrent policy against the influx of refugees fleeing failed states harkens America back to its interment days and our own penchant for human-rights abuses.

We’re understandably reluctant to zoom in on our own signature style of abusing privacy and autonomy for profit. Pointing at China’s oppression of the Uighur peoples makes us feel better about the caged baby asylum seekers, all alone in Texas, wearing weeks-old diapers under 24-hour fluorescence on cold concrete. But ignoring the problem at the border doesn’t fix it. Refugee children in an Arizona camp have

The searing images and incomprehensible atrocities at our border today are animating America’s political emotion. Compare this to China, where an astonishing scale of censorship allows the Party to shield the population from news about its prison state in Xinjiang.

But that doesn’t mean that the US isn’t busy engineering its own digital surveillance state. It’s just doing a better job of camouflaging it, so we can go on pretending to be the land of the free.

Free speech doesn’t equal freedom

Here in the US, the digital censorship machine is brutally efficient at marketing itself as a free-speech platform while keeping things safe for advertising profits.

Suppliers cash in on billions in contracts to provide logistics for the growth industry of internment.
The farce relies on legions of outsourced content moderators in sweatshop conditions who scrub and clean services like Facebook and YouTube of unimaginable volumes of unspeakable violence, explicit pornography, and incendiary hate. Both Amazon and Google transcribe audio files from their customers’ smart speakers for algorithmic training purposes. And Amazon has hired a news editor to gather local crime stories from its connected doorbell camera platform, Ring, to create crime news intended to induce fear in consumers—and therefore install more Amazon home-surveillance gear.

Suppliers cash in on billions in contracts to provide logistics for the growth industry of internment. From foil blankets to cloud-computing storage and the face masks worn by agents to stifle the stench of unbathed people overcrowded in cages for 40 days, American companies are getting into the business of migration management.

Palantir, the big data analytics contractor for big government that is currently positioning for IPO, is a uniquely concerning profiteer from the war on immigrants. Founded by vaunted venture capitalist and ultra-libertarian Peter Thiel and self-described socialist CEO Alex Karp, Palantir’s data and software help power Trump’s deportation force by unifying disparate data sources into user-friendly apps. For example, agents can easily cross-reference data points like license-plate cameras to court documents, helping power the largest data-driven immigration dragnet ever—all with the efficiency of ordering an Uber.

ICE agents are now storming sanctuary cities asking for papers, and they’re equipped with Palantir apps to tap into surveillance networks and massive machine-learning data pools. Their goal? To pinpoint targets for deportation with a UX seemingly optimized for ethnic cleansing. And it doesn’t come cheap. A Palantir product called FALCON costs taxpayers $39,000,000 for an immigrant-tracking database.

While it has been reported that Palantir has contracts to provide ICE with its data-driven deportation tools, it has not been widely reported that Palantir also had a contract with the Census Bureau from 2016-2018. This was during the time that the Commerce Department would have been developing its plan to deploy the very first digital census.

We don’t know exactly what Palantir has been doing for the Census Bureau, and that’s exactly why we should try to find out. However, given Palantir’s contractor status, we shouldn’t have much confidence in a FOIA process, which is the Freedom of Information Act to legalize government transparency. It’s hard to imagine getting back anything other than a redacted block of black from an official information request, the dreaded Section 552(b)(4) exemption that protects “trade secrets” and other confidential corporate information.

Palantir’s UX is seemingly optimized for ethnic cleansing.
The Census has been mired in fear, uncertainty, and doubt over Trump’s insistence that a citizenship question be added, despite being blocked by the Supreme Court on a technicality. While there’s no longer enough time for the citizenship question to make it into the 2020 Census, the president has instructed his administration to identify alternative data sources to arrive at some kind of approximation of citizenship status data.

Title 13 of the US Code prohibits Census data from being used for law enforcement purposes. But given that Palantir has contracts for both the Census Bureau and immigration agencies, we will be relying on the ethical integrity of private contractors to have confidence that Title 13 will not be violated. The result of this would be the Trump administration achieving its explicit goals of deporting undocumented citizens at unprecedented scale.

Unfortunately, public trust in Palantir is scant. After all, it was a Palantir employee who helped build the notorious and illegal Facebook data-harvesting scheme that allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest 87 million accounts and then match 30 million accounts to registered voters for advertising surveillance, political profiling, and precision microtargeting. It’s what these folks do for a living.

Is that really so different from China’s social credit system?

The future of freedom

The US and China’s digital surveillance states sound like an episode of Black Mirror until you start poking around in the privacy policies that everyone ignores; Experian, Axciom, Oracle, Equifax, and countless other mysterious data brokers have been stealing and selling our secrets for years.

No doubt, there are profound differences between our plutocratic constitutional republic and China’s single-party autocracy. We enjoy the rights to criticize our government and investigate how it conducts its business of implementing policy enacted by elected representatives. But these rights must be vigorously exercised.

Witnessing the protests in Hong Kong over a controversial extradition bill revealed to the world just how much Hong Kongers value their autonomy from Beijing. But as Americans grapple with the manufactured crisis on the border and an ongoing tech-lash emanating from Silicon Valley, Palantir somehow symbolizes the fragile distinction between a patriotic software company building products to hunt terrorists and fight crime and an instrument of a despotic regime.

In that way, Washington and Beijing have something in common now. Both centers of power mobilize the national tech industries to solidify state power, sow ethnic division and oppression, and have ensured that the 1% enjoy maximum privacy protections while the populace enjoys none.

As an American, you might think twice about bringing your phone on a trip to China. But what about Mexico?
https://qz.com/1670686/the-us-has-a-lot ... nce-state/


Bannon and the Committee on the Present Danger: China
View all posts by James Porteous27 March 2019

Steve Bannon is among the co-founders of a committee that first existed in the 1950s before reappearing in 1976. Photo: EPA-EFE
26 March 2019 | Wendy Wu | South China Morning Post

A group of Washington policy advisers and former US government officials including Steve Bannon have revived a cold war-era advocacy organisation to take aim at China, which it called “an aggressive totalitarian foe”.

The Committee on the Present Danger: China, or CPDC, will be launched to facilitate “public education and advocacy against the full array of conventional and non-conventional dangers” posed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the group said in an announcement on Monday.

The committee’s latest iteration underscores the growth of opposition to Beijing in Washington’s policymaking circles, which has helped to fuel a bilateral tariff war started by US President Donald Trump last year and a new law that will tighten oversight of Chinese investments in the United States.

The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) was first established in the early 1950s as a bulwark against the influence of communism in the US. The group disbanded after some leading members were drafted into the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, but in 1976 was reformed by US foreign policy hawks to counter the Soviet Union during the cold war.

The Committee on the Present Danger is a non-partisan organization with one goal – to stiffen American resolve to confront the challenge presented by terrorism and the ideologies that drive it.

The committee members warned at a press event in Washington on Monday that China had posed a broad range of threats to the US: expanding military power, strengthening strategic nuclear capability, stealing US technology, repressing religions, human rights and minority groups, initiating “chemical warfare” by being the prime source of
fentanyl reaching the US
and influencing US campuses and corporations.

“As with the Soviet Union in the past, communist China represents an existential and ideological threat to the United States and to the idea of freedom – one that requires a new American consensus regarding the policies and priorities required to defeat this threat,” the committee’s announcement said.

The group’s vice-chairman Frank Gaffney, a defence adviser to former president Ronald Reagan, said the committee hoped to “set the stage for a series of national debates about China” to address the threats the country posed. Gaffney has spent much of his time since leaving government in the 1980s propagating stridently anti-Islamic views.

Even if Beijing faithfully kept its commitments under a trade agreement that Washington is trying to negotiate with China, the US would still face serious threats in other areas and must address those, Gaffney said.

Frank Gaffney said the revived committee aimed to initiate a series of debates about China. Photo: AFP

“China’s arsenal for global supremacy includes economic, informational, political and military warfare,” read a statement by James Fanell, a former US Navy intelligence official focusing on Pacific security affairs. The US “has witnessed already China’s expansion into the vacuum of a diminishing US presence in East Asia”, he said.

Fanell argued that Washington needed to regain a military deterrence position in the Indo-Pacific. “We already have slipped,” he said. “If we fall any further, we may not recover.”

Sasha Gong, also a member of the new CPD, said China was “waging an ideological war” against the US, which was “losing ground” and should consider it “as urgent as military defence”.

“We are disarming ourselves; meanwhile Chinese are taking our ground, broadcasting here, taking our people and winning hearts and minds,” said Gong, adding that the US’ response to China’s aggression was “very inadequate”.

Gong is the former chief of Voice of America’s Mandarin service. She
was sacked
by the US government-funded broadcaster along with two others in November for their involvement in a live-streamed 2017 interview with Chinese fugitive tycoon Guo Wengui, who has used social media to make

corruption accusations
against senior Chinese officials including Vice-President Wang Qishan.

In a faxed reply to the South China Morning Post, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had not heard about the organisation and that it was a “dead end” to revisit the cold war-era zero-sum mindset.

“We have repeatedly stated our stances with regard to the ‘China threat’ cliché,” the ministry said.

“We hope some people in the United States view China’s development in proper perspective, stop groundless accusations and defamation against China, and instead, be more engaged in deeds that would benefit China-US relations, the peace, stability and prosperity of the world,” the ministry said.

Although the committee boasts a roster of China experts, it also features a number of US public figures not known primarily as authorities on the country’s affairs.

The founders of the committee also include Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and co-founder of
far-right news outlet Breitbart
, which he described in an interview with American magazine Mother Jones as a “platform for the alt-right”.

Bannon is also known for being a former vice-president of
Cambridge Analytica
, the now-defunct data analysis firm that harvested the data of millions of Facebook users to predict and influence political movements.

The CPD gained notoriety in its first iteration when it issued NSC 68, a policy directive that called on Congress to triple the US defence budget to counter the Soviet Union’s expansion, according to a 2004 report by US political newspaper The Hill.

The second CPD was formed in 1976 by hawks from the Democratic and Republican parties who believed that “detente [had] lulled everybody into complacency”, The Hillquoted Yale University cold war scholar John Gaddis as saying.

The report described that CPD’s members as the original “neoconservatives” – former liberals who became disillusioned with the Democratic Party during the Jimmy Carter administration and advocated that the US initiate an arms build-up.

Additional reporting by Owen Churchill, Robert Delaney and Laura Zhou
https://hawkingsbaydispatch.com/2019/03 ... ger-china/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby Elvis » Thu Aug 20, 2020 5:57 pm

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/90424527 ... order-wall


Steve Bannon Charged With Misusing Donations For Trump's Border Wall


August 20, 202010:29 AM ET

Steve Bannon, President Trump's former political adviser, has pleaded not guilty through his counsel to wire-fraud and money-laundering charges related to an online scheme that federal prosecutors said was responsible for defrauding hundreds of thousands of people.

Bannon appeared via video link in the Southern District of New York hours after his arrest Thursday morning on a yacht off the Connecticut coast.
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Re: The Festering Darkness That is Steve Bannon

Postby Elvis » Thu Aug 20, 2020 6:29 pm

Doubting Thomas
@mikethomaswire1
· 3h

Yacht owned by Guo Wengui, a Chinese fugitive seeking US asylum. He is a member of Mara Lago. Wengui and Bannon are being investigated on federal and state charges for defrauding investors of $300 million in GTV Media. So the WBTW matter is only part of his problem.



bannon yacht 1.jpg


bannon yacht 2.jpg


bannon yacht 3.jpg


bannon yacht 4.jpg
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Spectacular!

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Aug 20, 2020 8:07 pm

Finally, the carceral state finds a worthy purpose.

I mean, he'll be out, of course, but it's beautiful.
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I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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