Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist for the first seven months of U.S. president Donald Trump's first administration, before Trump discharged him. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News and previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy from 1977 to 1983, after which he worked for two years at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker. In 1993, he became acting director of the research project Biosphere 2. He was an executive producer on 18 Hollywood films from 1991 to 2016. In 2007, he co-founded Breitbart News, a website which he described in 2016 as "the platform for the alt-right".
In 2016, Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and was appointed chief strategist and senior Counselor to the President following Trump's election. He left the position eight months later and rejoined Breitbart. In January 2018, after his criticism of Trump's children was reported in Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury, he was disavowed by Trump and subsequently left Breitbart.
After leaving the White House, Bannon opposed the Republican Party establishment and supported insurgent candidates in Republican primary elections. Bannon's reputation as a political strategist was questioned when former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore, despite Bannon's support, lost the 2017 United States Senate election in Alabama to Democrat Doug Jones. Bannon had declared his intention to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement". Accordingly, he has supported many national populist conservative political movements around the world, including creating a network of far-right groups in Europe.
In August 2020, Bannon and three others were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection with the We Build the Wall fundraising campaign. According to the grand jury indictment, Bannon and the defendants promised that all contributions would go to building a U.S.–Mexico border wall, but instead enriched themselves. Bannon pleaded not guilty. On January 20, 2021, on his last day in office, Trump pardoned Bannon, sparing him from a federal trial. Federal pardons do not cover state offenses, and in September 2022, Bannon was charged in New York state court on counts of fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy in connection with the campaign.
Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the 2021 United States Capitol attack. He was subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury on two criminal charges of contempt of Congress. In July 2022, he was convicted on both counts in a jury trial. He was sentenced in October 2022 to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine. After losing his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bannon surrendered to a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, where he was imprisoned July 1 – October 29, 2024.
Source : Wikipedia
