One of Donald Trump’s first moves after he was elected President was to tap Breitbart news executive Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. Bannon is a darling of the so-called alt-right, a collection of white supremacists and conspiracy mongers. Less well known is that Bannon, who as Washington Post conservative columnist Kathleen Parker observed, looks like he just slept in his clothes on a sidewalk grate, has a personal life as sordid as his political one.
Bannon’s ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, said in a 2007 court declaration that Bannon argued about letting their twin daughters attend a Los Angeles girls’ school because “he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.”
On January 1, 1996, Piccard called police to report that Bannon had attacked her. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and witness intimidation. The charges were eventually dropped when Piccard could not be located. But she affirmed the incident in her 2007 declaration, saying Bannon “became physical with me and grabbed me by the throat and arm,” smashed the phone she was using to call 911, screaming that she was a “crazy fucking cunt.”
Here are some excerpts from the police report.
Bill Lueders is associate editor of The Progressive.