What is Steve Bannon’s net worth? Where does his money come from?
The right-wing figure has been sentenced to four months in jail as well as a small fine but his personal wealth makes it a drop in the ocean.
Steve Bannon has had a long and perhaps surprisingly varied career. While he is well known now as the head of number of anti-globalisation organisations that fund the European right-wing, Bannon was once a soldier and film producer before settling on publishing hate.
According to celebritynetworth.com, Bannon is worth $20 million, while other estimates put his wealth at more than twice as much.
Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail on Friday after being found guilty of contempt of Congress. Bannon refused to give evidence before the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
How did Bannon make his money?
After serving as a US Navy lieutenant, Bannon worked in finance. After a short fling in the film industry Bannon co-founded the right-wing ‘news’ site Breitbart. He guided the site into being a platform tailor-made for the alt-right in America, using the platform to push his right-wing agenda. Taking the reins in 2012 Bannon turned the site into a force which rose to a monthly traffic of 17.3 million users in 2017 before he took up a role as a paid advisor of Donald Trump. For comparison, establish media like The Washington Post had 71 million people viewing the site in the month of December 2021.
Bannon has had plenty of money making ventures in the last 20 years. Outside of Breitbart he used his connections to convince investors to give him money for projects such as underpaying a Chinese workforce to ‘farm’ for World of Warcraft items before selling them to players for real money. Bloomberg reported that Bannon’s stake in Cambridge Analytica, a data collection firm linked to Brexit, was sold for up to $5 million before he joined Trump’s administration.
Surprisingly, he also took a cut of the serialisation of Seinfeld during his time as an investment banker. Various organisations reported that Bannon made $32 million from the deal in 1993.
He may have made some of his money through illegal means and was under federal investigation for allegedly defrauding hundreds of thousands of dollars from his “We Build the Wall” campaign. Although he was aprdoned by President Trump, he is still being tried at state level in New York with a court date set for November 2023.