In the three years before he became Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon lived as a virtual nomad in a quest to build a populist political insurgency.
No presidential adviser in recent memory has followed such a mysterious, peripatetic path to the White House. It was as though he was a man with no fixed address.
He owned a house and condo in Southern California, where he had entertainment and consulting businesses, a driver’s license and a checking account. He claimed Florida as his residence, registering to vote in Miami and telling authorities he lived at the same address as his third ex-wife.
At the same time, he routinely stayed in Washington and New York as he engineered the expansion of Breitbart News and hosted a live Breitbart radio program. By 2015, Bannon stayed so often at Breitbart’s townhouse headquarters on Capitol Hill that he kept a picture of a daughter on a mantle piece, beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
Bannon told a friend that year he was living in multiple cities, including Washington, New York, London and Miami, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The issue of Bannon’s legal residency has been simmering since last summer, shortly after he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign. The Guardian reported in an Aug. 26 story that he was registered to vote at a then-vacant house and speculated that that Bannon may have signed an oath that he was a Florida resident to take advantage of the state’s lack of state income taxes.
In California, where Bannon had lived and owned property for more than two decades, income tax can exceed 12 percent.
Bannon has not responded to repeated requests by The Washington Post to the discuss the matter. Two Post reporters sought to independently verify his residency claims, using a wide array of publicly available information.
They obtained utility bills, court records, real estate transactions, state driver reports and the checks he wrote to pay municipal taxes in California. They interviewed neighbors, spoke with landlords and tracked his Breitbart-related activity.
In the digital age, when most Americans leave a clear footprint of their whereabouts, Bannon left a meandering trail filled with ambiguity, contradictions and questions. The Post found that Bannon left a negligible footprint in Florida. He did not get a Florida driver’s license or register a car in the state. He never voted in Florida, and neighbors near two homes he leased in Miami said they never saw him. His rent and utility bills were sent to his business manager in California.
Bannon’s former wife occupied the premises, according to a landlord and neighbors.
At the same time Bannon said he was living with his ex-wife, she was under investigation for involvement in a plot to smuggle drugs and a cellphone into a Miami jail, a law enforcement document obtained by The Post shows.
The Post learned that state prosecutors in Miami have an active investigation into Bannon’s assertions that he was a Florida resident and qualified to vote in the state from 2014 to 2016. In late August, investigators subpoenaed Bannon’s lease of a Coconut Grove home and other documents. They also contacted the landlords of that home and another that Bannon leased nearby, and sought information from a gardener and handyman who worked at one of the homes, according to documents and interviews.
Because state laws do not clearly define residency, making a false registration case can be difficult.
California connection
A former investment banker and Hollywood producer, Bannon lived in California when he took a turn toward politics nearly a decade ago.
He had a condo in Los Angeles and a house just to the south in Laguna Beach, in Orange County. In 2010, he told Orange County election officials that he wanted to become a “permanent absentee voter” and have all ballots mailed to his Laguna Beach home.
In 2011, Bannon produced and directed a political documentary about Sarah Palin for the Victory Film Project, a company in Sarasota, Fla. He is listed as a manager of the company in Florida corporate records.
In March 2012, with the death of founder Andrew Breitbart, Bannon became executive chairman of the Los Angeles-based Breitbart News, which was expanding its operations to Washington.
Bannon was still a resident of California, records show. In the November 2012 elections, he voted in Orange County by absentee ballot. That same month, he renewed his California driver’s license for five years.
But in his subsequent travels across the country, his living situation became more complicated. The details gathered by The Post create uncertainty about where exactly he was spending the bulk of his time.
On Feb. 9, 2013, Bannon and Diane Clohesy, his former third wife, signed a lease application for a three-bedroom house on Opechee Drive in a lush Miami neighborhood with palm trees and Spanish-style homes.
Bannon signed as “applicant,” and Clohesy signed as “applicant’s spouse.”
The two were married in 2006, when Bannon was 53 and Clohesy was 36. They divorced in California in 2009. She had moved to Florida in 2008, “starting a new life in Miami,” Bannon said in court papers during the divorce. But the two remained in touch, and she worked on three political documentaries he directed in 2011 and 2012.
Bannon told his new landlords that he would be splitting his time between California and Florida, according to interviews The Post conducted with the property owners. Bannon and Clohesy both signed the two-year lease, records show.
The lease application said Bannon was “relocating from California.” But Devin Kammerer, the real estate agent who represented Bannon and Clohesy, said he never met Bannon in person, and only sent him listings by email.
“It was Diane who made the decisions about where she wanted to be, and she’d send over listings to Steve for his approval,” Kammerer said. “Diane was very clear on what she wanted.”
The $4,900 monthly rent was a big jump for Clohesy, who declared on the lease application that her most recent apartment had cost her $950 a month, documents show. But by his own account, Bannon could afford it.
He stated on the application that he earned $750,000 a year as chairman of Breitbart News Network, a figure that has not been previously reported. He also earned $270,000 as executive chairman of Arc Entertainment, a film distribution company based in Santa Monica, Calif.
In addition, Bannon received about $100,000 in salary that year as part-time chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, a new nonprofit charity in Tallahassee, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Bannon, two Breitbart writers and other conservative activists had launched the organization a year earlier and it produced reports and books that were promoted by Breitbart. Bannon claimed he worked 30 hours a week at GAI, according to IRS filings.
Just weeks after signing the Opechee Drive lease, Bannon launched “Breitbart News Sunday with Stephen K. Bannon,” a three-hour program broadcast live Sunday nights from SiriusXM studios in Washington.
In May 2013, Bannon opened an account in his name for municipal sewer and water service at the Opechee Drive residence, documents show.
The utility account is one of the few public indications of Bannon’s presence in Florida. But Bannon told utility officials to mail the bills to the office of his business manager on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to documents obtained through Florida public records laws.
Four neighbors told The Post they do not recall seeing Bannon at the house.
“I never saw him,” said Steven Chastain, who lived a few doors away on a nearby street.
“He wasn’t living there,” said Barbara Pope, a longtime resident who often walked her dog on Opechee Drive. “I would have recognized him.”
At the time Bannon was sharing the lease with Clohesy in Opechee, she was apparently involved with another man. Neighbors said they repeatedly saw a man they could not identify at the house.
She filed for a restraining order against Jose A. Cabana in 2012. He filed one against her in May 2013, court records show. She was granted a two-year injunction against him and his complaint was dropped after he failed to appear in court. Cabana was charged with cocaine distribution in November 2013 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He could not be reached for comment.
In October 2013, Clohesy became ensnared in an undercover investigation of a jail guard suspected of smuggling drugs and other contraband to another man, a friend of hers in the Miami-Dade County Pre-trial Detention Center, according to an arrest warrant for the jail guard first reported by the the Miami New Times.
Investigators eavesdropping on a phone call between Clohesy and the inmate heard them arrange for her to deliver a “pop tart” — code for a cellphone — along with several ounces of marijuana to a prison guard, the warrant said. Clohesy, who was under surveillance, later met with the guard in a parking lot and handed over the marijuana, the phone and $700 in cash, the warrant said.
No presidential adviser in recent memory has followed such a mysterious, peripatetic path to the White House. It was as though he was a man with no fixed address.
He owned a house and condo in Southern California, where he had entertainment and consulting businesses, a driver’s license and a checking account. He claimed Florida as his residence, registering to vote in Miami and telling authorities he lived at the same address as his third ex-wife.
At the same time, he routinely stayed in Washington and New York as he engineered the expansion of Breitbart News and hosted a live Breitbart radio program. By 2015, Bannon stayed so often at Breitbart’s townhouse headquarters on Capitol Hill that he kept a picture of a daughter on a mantle piece, beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
Bannon told a friend that year he was living in multiple cities, including Washington, New York, London and Miami, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The issue of Bannon’s legal residency has been simmering since last summer, shortly after he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign. The Guardian reported in an Aug. 26 story that he was registered to vote at a then-vacant house and speculated that that Bannon may have signed an oath that he was a Florida resident to take advantage of the state’s lack of state income taxes.
In California, where Bannon had lived and owned property for more than two decades, income tax can exceed 12 percent.
Bannon has not responded to repeated requests by The Washington Post to the discuss the matter. Two Post reporters sought to independently verify his residency claims, using a wide array of publicly available information.
They obtained utility bills, court records, real estate transactions, state driver reports and the checks he wrote to pay municipal taxes in California. They interviewed neighbors, spoke with landlords and tracked his Breitbart-related activity.
In the digital age, when most Americans leave a clear footprint of their whereabouts, Bannon left a meandering trail filled with ambiguity, contradictions and questions. The Post found that Bannon left a negligible footprint in Florida. He did not get a Florida driver’s license or register a car in the state. He never voted in Florida, and neighbors near two homes he leased in Miami said they never saw him. His rent and utility bills were sent to his business manager in California.
Bannon’s former wife occupied the premises, according to a landlord and neighbors.
At the same time Bannon said he was living with his ex-wife, she was under investigation for involvement in a plot to smuggle drugs and a cellphone into a Miami jail, a law enforcement document obtained by The Post shows.
The Post learned that state prosecutors in Miami have an active investigation into Bannon’s assertions that he was a Florida resident and qualified to vote in the state from 2014 to 2016. In late August, investigators subpoenaed Bannon’s lease of a Coconut Grove home and other documents. They also contacted the landlords of that home and another that Bannon leased nearby, and sought information from a gardener and handyman who worked at one of the homes, according to documents and interviews.
Because state laws do not clearly define residency, making a false registration case can be difficult.
California connection
A former investment banker and Hollywood producer, Bannon lived in California when he took a turn toward politics nearly a decade ago.
He had a condo in Los Angeles and a house just to the south in Laguna Beach, in Orange County. In 2010, he told Orange County election officials that he wanted to become a “permanent absentee voter” and have all ballots mailed to his Laguna Beach home.
In 2011, Bannon produced and directed a political documentary about Sarah Palin for the Victory Film Project, a company in Sarasota, Fla. He is listed as a manager of the company in Florida corporate records.
In March 2012, with the death of founder Andrew Breitbart, Bannon became executive chairman of the Los Angeles-based Breitbart News, which was expanding its operations to Washington.
Bannon was still a resident of California, records show. In the November 2012 elections, he voted in Orange County by absentee ballot. That same month, he renewed his California driver’s license for five years.
But in his subsequent travels across the country, his living situation became more complicated. The details gathered by The Post create uncertainty about where exactly he was spending the bulk of his time.
On Feb. 9, 2013, Bannon and Diane Clohesy, his former third wife, signed a lease application for a three-bedroom house on Opechee Drive in a lush Miami neighborhood with palm trees and Spanish-style homes.
Bannon signed as “applicant,” and Clohesy signed as “applicant’s spouse.”
The two were married in 2006, when Bannon was 53 and Clohesy was 36. They divorced in California in 2009. She had moved to Florida in 2008, “starting a new life in Miami,” Bannon said in court papers during the divorce. But the two remained in touch, and she worked on three political documentaries he directed in 2011 and 2012.
Bannon told his new landlords that he would be splitting his time between California and Florida, according to interviews The Post conducted with the property owners. Bannon and Clohesy both signed the two-year lease, records show.
The lease application said Bannon was “relocating from California.” But Devin Kammerer, the real estate agent who represented Bannon and Clohesy, said he never met Bannon in person, and only sent him listings by email.
“It was Diane who made the decisions about where she wanted to be, and she’d send over listings to Steve for his approval,” Kammerer said. “Diane was very clear on what she wanted.”
The $4,900 monthly rent was a big jump for Clohesy, who declared on the lease application that her most recent apartment had cost her $950 a month, documents show. But by his own account, Bannon could afford it.
He stated on the application that he earned $750,000 a year as chairman of Breitbart News Network, a figure that has not been previously reported. He also earned $270,000 as executive chairman of Arc Entertainment, a film distribution company based in Santa Monica, Calif.
In addition, Bannon received about $100,000 in salary that year as part-time chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, a new nonprofit charity in Tallahassee, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Bannon, two Breitbart writers and other conservative activists had launched the organization a year earlier and it produced reports and books that were promoted by Breitbart. Bannon claimed he worked 30 hours a week at GAI, according to IRS filings.
Just weeks after signing the Opechee Drive lease, Bannon launched “Breitbart News Sunday with Stephen K. Bannon,” a three-hour program broadcast live Sunday nights from SiriusXM studios in Washington.
In May 2013, Bannon opened an account in his name for municipal sewer and water service at the Opechee Drive residence, documents show.
The utility account is one of the few public indications of Bannon’s presence in Florida. But Bannon told utility officials to mail the bills to the office of his business manager on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to documents obtained through Florida public records laws.
Four neighbors told The Post they do not recall seeing Bannon at the house.
“I never saw him,” said Steven Chastain, who lived a few doors away on a nearby street.
“He wasn’t living there,” said Barbara Pope, a longtime resident who often walked her dog on Opechee Drive. “I would have recognized him.”
At the time Bannon was sharing the lease with Clohesy in Opechee, she was apparently involved with another man. Neighbors said they repeatedly saw a man they could not identify at the house.
She filed for a restraining order against Jose A. Cabana in 2012. He filed one against her in May 2013, court records show. She was granted a two-year injunction against him and his complaint was dropped after he failed to appear in court. Cabana was charged with cocaine distribution in November 2013 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He could not be reached for comment.
In October 2013, Clohesy became ensnared in an undercover investigation of a jail guard suspected of smuggling drugs and other contraband to another man, a friend of hers in the Miami-Dade County Pre-trial Detention Center, according to an arrest warrant for the jail guard first reported by the the Miami New Times.
Investigators eavesdropping on a phone call between Clohesy and the inmate heard them arrange for her to deliver a “pop tart” — code for a cellphone — along with several ounces of marijuana to a prison guard, the warrant said. Clohesy, who was under surveillance, later met with the guard in a parking lot and handed over the marijuana, the phone and $700 in cash, the warrant said.
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