Steve Bannon is one of the far right’s most well-known and active operators, having been an adviser to Donald Trump and and the editor of Breitbart. Why, then, did he spend months in the homes of Jeffrey Epstein, interviewing the billionaire sex criminal for a documentary?
Business Insider revealed Wednesday that Bannon has hours of footage of Epstein from the financier’s homes in Manhattan and Paris before Epstein died in jail in 2019, supposedly as part of a documentary to be called The Monsters: Epstein’s Life Among the Global Elite.
More than five years later, a small teaser trailer of the film from 2021, showing Bannon arguing with Epstein over his treatment of women, is the only part of it that has been released. It makes little sense, considering that Epstein is vilified in Bannon’s target right-wing audience and that having exclusive footage of the deceased billionaire would likely bring in viewers far beyond that group.
One possibility might be that Bannon wouldn’t be reflected in the best light. Bannon met Epstein in December 2017 after the former stopped working for then-President Trump. During the summer of 2018, Bannon spent a lot of time with Epstein, supposedly for the documentary. But according to associates of the two men, Bannon’s documentary wasn’t serious at all.
These associates told B.I. that the two acted more like friends than adversaries, and Bannon was actually trying to help Epstein with public relations, advising the billionaire on how to handle the legal and journalistic investigations against him. Bannon continued to spend time with Epstein through the next year, when the financier would be arrested on sex-trafficking charges.
Despite the fact that legal cases connected to Epstein are still ongoing, including the criminal sex-trafficking trial of his wife, Ghislaine Maxwell, the rest of the footage has not come to light. Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, told B.I. in 2023 that he received some of the footage from his brother, but when he asked Bannon about the rest of it, he was rebuffed.
“He told me he had like 16 hours of videotaping with Jeffrey in his vault,” Mark Epstein said. “And he told me it was protected because it was witness preparation and it was protected under attorney-client privilege. But the thing is, Bannon’s not an attorney.”
Bannon himself is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress after he refused to respond to a subpoena to testify before the House January 6 committee. Is Bannon refusing to release the footage because it would reflect poorly on him in addition to his conviction? Is he worried that it would reflect poorly on Trump, a onetime associate of Epstein who claims to have had a falling out with the financier in the 2000s? It just adds to the many mysteries and conspiracies surrounding Epstein.
