Steve Bannon was arrested Thursday, August 20 in Connecticut by U.S. postal inspectors. He was indicted by the US Attorney General for New York and arrested for money laundering and wire fraud.  Read the 24- page indictment is here, This is a you-can’t make this up story for so many reasons that I don’t know where to begin.  Ironic twists, humor, karma, rinse-and-repeat scandal.

Who is Stephen K. Bannon?  Besides a fat guy with disheveled hair in a wrinkled suit?  Working backwards, he was Trump’s Chief Strategist for two years, and before that the architect of Trump’s 2016 campaign strategy.   I wouldn’t say it was wholly successful because in the end Trump had to cheat to “win”.  But it was savy and somewhat successful because it got Trump within cheating distance of the White House.  

Bannon’s resume is impressive in its diversity.  Before joining Trump’s campaign he’d been a Navy officer, a Hollywood Producer (18 films), an investment banker and he co-founded Breitbart News, a major alt-right platform.  Some describe him as an anarchist but he is a garden-variety white supremacists who will burn it all down than share power with non-whites.  He is a clear-eyed cynic.  He knew Trump was ill-equipped for the Office, didn’t believe the kooky conspiracy theories rampant on Breitbart but encouraged them to grow membership, and knew when and how to sacrifice a lesser piece on the board.  He thrived in the White House until he didn’t. Trump fired him on August 17, 2017 although anonymous sources said Kushner wanted him gone.  That same day, Bannon went back to Breitbart. In January 2018, Breitbart fired him, probably at Trump’s urging.

But typical of the type of people who work for Trump he quickly found fresh larceny:   building Trump’s wall.  Bannon and 3 others started a Gofundme campaign called We Build the Wall.  Hundreds  of Thousands of MAGA-ts gave money to privately fund the wall since Trump’s promised Mexican funding never materialized. They raised $25 million+  and according to the indictment Bannon used nearly $1 million of it for personal stuff.

Grab hold to something because here’s where things take a sharp turn to the weird. Bannon was arrested on the yacht of a fugitive Chinese billionaire.  That’s random but weird.  He’d been on the yacht in Connecticut for months.  He was arrested by federal postal inspectors.  That’s ironic or maybe karma considering Trump’s war on the postal service. Trump wasted no time deploying a version of his “I barely knew him but I wish him well” recipe for distancing himself from trouble. He said, “I feel very badly”, “and I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time.”  He said he knew nothing about the We Build the Wall campaign but then said “I don’t like that project,” proving that he did know something about it.  Donald Jr promoted the We Build the Wall effort last year because it was “private enterprise at its finest.”
And in case you do not know where Bannon’s arrest fits in the arc of Trump’s presidency, here is a reminder