Canada's early COVID-19 cases came from the U.S. not China, provincial data shows

The National Post asked for data on the origins of travel-related cases in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, which have seen the majority of Canada’s COVID-19 cases


CBSA inspects vehicles and cars crossing over from the U.S.A into Canada on March 19, 2020. PHOTO BY ALEX FILIPE /Reuters
Article Sidebar

OTTAWA — The global COVID-19 pandemic began in Wuhan, China, but data from Canada’s largest provinces show it was American travellers, not Chinese, who brought the deadly virus to our shores.

Despite this evidence, the federal government brought in travel restrictions on China first and American border restrictions were the last to be put in place.

Canada's early COVID-19 cases came from the U.S. not China, provincial data shows


The National Post asked for data on the origins of travel-related cases in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, the four provinces that have seen the majority of Canada’s COVID-19 cases.

Canada moved later than many other countries to restrict international travel from China. It began with screening measures at airports that were slow to roll out and relied on passengers to disclose if they had symptoms of the virus. Air Canada suspended flights from China in February and the government encouraged people not to travel to China as early as January, but did not ban travellers until March 18 when it imposed sweeping global restrictions.

A body is removed after several residents died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the Eatonville Care Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada April 14, 2020. PHOTO BY REUTERS
When those restrictions went into force virtually all international travel had ground to a halt. International visitors were barred from Canada and only Canadian citizens and permanent residents were allowed to return to the country.

The U.S. border remained an exception for several days, as the government coordinated a plan with the U.S. to keep essential goods flowing.

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix was critical of that decision at the time because the government was leaving the U.S. border open to travellers. As an outbreak picked up speed in neighbouring Washington state, he was direct with Americans during a press conference   that he wanted them to stay out of his province.


“We remain concerned that access from visitors from the United States continues to be allowed,” said. Dix. “It’s our strong message that visitors from the United States not come to British Columbia.”

As of April 17, Ontario has identified 1,201 cases of COVID-19 in people who had recently returned from some type of international travel. Of those cases, just five related to travel from China. By contrast, 404 were from people travelling from the United States.

The other top five destinations were the United Kingdom with 126 cases, cruise ships with 74 cases, Mexico with 68 and sunny Spain with 49 cases. Iran and Italy, two other hot spots for the virus, are also more heavily represented than China; travel from Iran was connected to 19 cases and there were seven cases from Italy.


In Quebec, 373 cases came from the United States and the province reports zero cases connected to travel from China. Travellers from France brought 151 cases to Quebec, 121 originated in Puerto Rico and 117 in Austria.

Alberta didn’t have a complete breakdown of its travel cases, but had only a single case connected to China, while fully 36 per cent of its travel-related cases are from the United States. British Columbia was unable to provide a breakdown by country, but the province’s data shows that, while its first cases were from travel, most came from spread within the community.

The U.S., U.K. and China were the top three destinations for travellers to Canada in 2018, according to data from Statistics Canada.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said they were responding to the information they had at the time and started with enhanced screening and self isolation orders.

“We instituted the enhanced screening focused initially on China and then as it moved into Europe and Iran,” she said.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/canadas-early-covid-19-cases-came-from-the-u-s-not-china-provincial-data-shows

Why Is the United States Exporting Coronavirus?

Holding asylum seekers, immigrants and others in facilities where the virus easily spreads only to later send them to other nations is a public health hazard — here and abroad.

By The Editorial Board

On March 21, the Trump administration drew on a federal law on public health to effectively shut the borders to all migrants and asylum seekers in order to avert the “serious danger” of a communicable disease arriving from abroad.

That makes it all the more bitterly ironic that the United States, with the largest number of coronavirus cases in the world, is now consciously spreading the pandemic beyond its borders by continuing to deport thousands of immigrants, many infected with the coronavirus, to poor countries ill equipped to cope with the disease.

President Trump and his senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, have long shown themselves impervious to criticism of the effectiveness and morality of their hard-line policies. Yet in this pandemic, mass deportations are not only cruel but also dangerous to public health abroad and at home. Dangerous because seeding and fanning the pandemic in any country, let alone those suffering from corruption and poverty, will only prolong the health crisis and worsen the conditions that led to mass migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Haiti and Mexico.

It’s happened before. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration signed legislation that made it easier to deport gang members from California to El Salvador, where they became the progenitor of violent gangs that spread through the region, sending tens of thousands of their victims to seek refuge in the United States. One of the gangs, MS-13, is often cited by President Trump as an example of the risk of letting in immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Guatemala offers an illustration of the problem today. In late April, its government reported that nearly a fifth of the country’s coronavirus cases were linked to deportees from the United States. On one flight of what is known as ICE Air, the deportation fleet run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 71 of 76 deportees tested positive for the coronavirus. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went to Guatemala to check on the claim, 12 deportees selected at random all tested positive.

The Guatemalan government temporarily suspended accepting deportation flights, prompting Mr. Trump to threaten penalties against countries that “denied” or “delayed” accepting deportees. The flights are operating. Returning migrants, meanwhile, have become pariahs, subjected to threats and violence as the “contagiados,” the infected. Similar accounts have come from other countries receiving the expelled migrants. The United States, said the health minister of Guatemala, has become the “Wuhan of the Americas.”

Though deportations are down from the 23,103 that ICE reported in January, probably as a result of fewer arrivals through the closed border, they are continuing: 18,811 in March; 9,832 in April; 7,411 in May; and 2,221 in the first 13 days of June, according to figures provided by ICE. The agency said that since April 26 it has been testing “some aliens in custody and prior to removal.” But ICE said it was getting only about 2,000 tests per month from the Department of Health and Human Services, and so could test only a “sample” of the population. ICE is believed to have about 32,000 immigrants in detention centers across the United States in facilities where the virus can easily spread.

The responsible, not to mention humane, response when the pandemic struck would have been to suspend deportations — and to release as many immigrants as possible from detention centers that, like prisons across the United States, have become incubators of the pandemic. That is what Democratic lawmakers, human rights organizations and the United Nations urged, and what the countries to which infected migrants were being sent hoped for. Most European countries have put deportations on hold.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter in April accusing the Department of Homeland Security of “exploiting” the pandemic “by claiming new, sweeping powers to summarily expel large, unknown numbers of individuals arriving at our border in clear contravention of existing federal laws.” The U.N. Network on Migration, which includes the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the U.N. refugee agency, called on all governments on May 13 to suspend “forced returns” during the pandemic, arguing that deportations create serious health risks for everyone — “migrants, public officials, health workers, social workers and both host and origin communities.” The nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch also called for a moratorium on deportations, as well as a halt to involuntary transfers of migrants between facilities.



But there has been no grounding of ICE Air flights. Dozens of deportation flights have continued monthly, with destinations in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Jamaica, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which tracks ICE Air flights through public records. Unaccompanied youths have become a special target for fast-track deportations. Last week, a federal judge in Washington temporarily blocked the deportation of a 16-year-old Honduran with a stern reprimand to the government for its overly broad use of health laws to pursue its restrictionist immigration agenda.

At a closed meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on April 17, the acting ICE director, Matthew T. Albence, explained that a broad release would signal that the United States was not enforcing its immigration laws, which would create a “huge pull factor” and cause a “rush at the borders.”

That show-no-mercy logic will not bow to common sense. That makes it all the more imperative for Congress, the courts and nongovernmental organizations to continue seeking an end to the administration’s dangerous deportation drive, and to expose its immigration policies for the assault on American values that they represent.

A media business tied to Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui is facing probes by the FBI and SEC over hundreds of millions of dollars of fundraising this spring -- and many investor complaints.

Former Trump political adviser and exiled Chinese businessman raised more than $300 million in private offering, Guo says
By  Brian Spegele ,  Sha Hua  and  Aruna Viswanatha
Aug. 19, 2020 1:17 pm ET

A media company linked to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui raised more than $300 million in a private offering this spring that is now being investigated by federal and state authorities, say people familiar with the matter.

Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui built a large following online, particularly among the Chinese diaspora in the U.S. and elsewhere. NATALIE KEYSSAR FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
 WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE  U.S.
Fundraising at Company Tied to Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui Faces Probe
Former Trump political adviser and exiled Chinese businessman raised more than $300 million in private offering, Guo says
By  Brian Spegele,  Sha Hua and Aruna Viswanatha
Aug. 19, 2020 1:17 pm ET

A media company linked to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui raised more than $300 million in a private offering this spring that is now being investigated by federal and state authorities, say people familiar with the matter.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. have frozen accounts tied to fundraising for the company, GTV Media Group, some of these people said. Bank of America Corp. also closed an account for GTV Media’s parent company shortly after it was opened in recent months, another person with knowledge of the situation said.

The federal probe is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission, people familiar with the investigation said. The investigators have been examining whether GTV Media or associates of Mr. Guo violated securities laws through the private share placement. The New York state attorney general’s office has also been examining the matter, these people said.

Soon after the fundraising, some investors began pushing for refunds after they said they never received official documentation verifying their investments in GTV Media, among other issues that led them to distrust Mr. Guo.

Mr. Guo, a former property tycoon who is now one of China’s most-wanted fugitives, and Mr. Bannon were two of the key people behind GTV Media’s launch this spring, according to a company fundraising document and interviews. The document identifies Mr. Bannon as a company director, while Mr. Guo served as the public face for its fundraising. Associates of Mr. Guo are listed as GTV Media executives, while Mr. Guo is described as a company adviser.

Messrs. Guo and Bannon joined forces in the last few years as tough critics of China’s Communist Party, and recently have been spending significant time together on Mr. Guo’s yacht, according to videos posted on a website affiliated with Mr. Guo. Mr. Guo faces accusations of wrongdoing in China including bribery, fraud and money laundering—allegations he has denied.

GTV Media said in a statement that it had carried out the private placement under the guidance of its lawyers and that “all of the raised funds are intact.”

The company added that it is fully prepared to cooperate with any U.S. agency that has questions about the private placement or its business.

A representative for Mr. Guo didn’t provide comment, and Mr. Bannon declined to comment.

Former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui joined forces in the last few years as tough critics of China’s Communist Party.
PHOTO: DON EMMERT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The FBI had been examining Mr. Guo’s work with Mr. Bannon even before the private placement this spring. The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported last month that FBI agents had been investigating Mr. Guo and the money he used to fund his media efforts in the U.S. for more than six months and that prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn had been involved in the probe.


At that time, representatives for Messrs. Guo and Bannon said neither man had been contacted by the FBI as part of the probe.

Earlier this month, Mr. Guo said in an online video that he had been subpoen

Fundraising at Company Tied to Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui Faces Probe

Fundraising at Company Tied to Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui Faces Probe

Former Trump political adviser and exiled Chinese businessman raised more than $300 million in private offering, Guo says

By  Brian Spegele ,  Sha Hua  and  Aruna Viswanatha
Aug. 19, 2020 1:17 pm ET


A media company linked to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui raised more than $300 million in a private offering this spring that is now being investigated by federal and state authorities, say people familiar with the matter.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. have frozen accounts tied to fundraising for the company, GTV Media Group, some of these people said. Bank of America Corp. also closed an account for GTV Media’s parent company shortly after it was...

FBI Probes Company Tied To Steve Bannon, Chinese Exile And Morgan Stanley Heir

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI and SEC have launched an investigation into Bannon-linked GTV Media Group, which raised over $300 million this spring in a private placement. At issue is whether any securities laws may have been violated during the placement, which was restricted to accredited investors - thus avoiding SEC registration requirements. Smaller investors were able to participate in the GTV Media offering through an entity called Voice of Guo Media, Inc - which raised nearly $120 million according to the report.


GTV Media holds itself out as "the only uncensored and independent bridge between China and the Western World," telling potential investors that "it would be a platform for news, social media and e-commerce," while stating a pre-investment valuation of $1.8 billion.


The fundraising documents reviewed by the Journal say GTV Media aimed to sell a 10% stake in the company for as much as $200 million, with the rest held by another company affiliated with Mr. Guo. -WSJ

Company directors include Bannon and John A. Morgan - son of Morgan Stanley's co-founder, while exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui is listed as an adviser to the endeavor. Investor Kyle Bass is listed by the company as a director, however he tweeted in July that he no longer serves on GTV Media's board, and a person familiar with the company confirmed that he had resigned.

Guo, a wealthy Chinese businessman who fled the country in 2014 now lives in the United States, launched an aggressive campaign in 2017 to expose corruption by China's business and political elites. As one might suspect, this triggered Beijing, which has attempted to have Guo extradited on charges which include bribery, kidnapping, fraud, money laundering and rape. Guo calls the charges part of a 'misinformation campaign' against him by CCP officials.

Yet, after throwing the kitchen sink at him to no avail, it now appears that the FBI (which unsuccessfully tried to recruit Gao as an informant in 2017) has taken up the case against him.

According to the report, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have frozen accounts linked to GTV, while Bank of America has closed an account for GTV's parent company shortly after it was opened. The Journal claims that some investors began to push for refunds - claiming they never received official documentation verifying their investment in GTV Media. The SEC is reportedly reaching out to conduct interviews with investors who want refunds, some of whom have lodged complaints against Guo and his associates, according to the report.


GTV Media said in a statement that it carried out the private placement using legal guidance, and that "all of the raised funds are intact." Moreover, they stand fully prepared to cooperate with any US agency that has questions about the private placement.

Guo, meanwhile, said in an online video earlier this month that he had been subpoenaed, and welcomed the investigations.

Bipartisan Group of Senators Wanted DOJ to Investigate Stephen Bannon

The Los Angles Times says the senators sent a letter last year calling for a criminal investigation.

As the president’s battles over mail voting, the US Postal Service, and COVID-19 funding dominate headlines, a significant piece of news touching on alleged criminal activity by several close Trump associates and family members flew largely under the radar.

On Friday night the Los Angeles Times reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a bipartisan criminal referral to the US Department of Justice last summer asking for investigations into Stephen Bannon, a former Trump confidant and strategist; Erik Prince, the head of a mercenary security company and the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos; and Sam Clovis, Trump’s 2016 campaign co-chairman. According to the Times, each of those three Trump associates may have lied during congressional testimony, and both Republicans and Democrats on the committee wanted DOJ to investigate whether criminal charges would be warranted.

The letter also raised concerns about testimony provided by Donald Trump Jr., Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort. While the letter didn’t directly accusing them of lying to Congress to the same degree as Bannon, Prince, and Clovis, according to the Times the committee questioned if testimony provided by these Trump associates conflicted with information provided to former special counsel Robert Mueller by Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman. The testimony concerned what Trump’s son, Hicks, Kushner, and Manafort knew about a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who’d promised to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 campaign.


The Times notes that “criminal referrals from Capitol Hill have been somewhat common since Trump took office in 2017,” but this referral was “rare” because it was sent by the bipartisan leaders of one of Congress’ most stable and non-partisan committees which was conducting its own thorough review of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

It’s unclear what happened with the referral after it was sent to a federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice. But a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment to the Times (and did not return an email from Mother Jones on Saturday), and given the lack of public action taken since the letter was sent in July 2019, there’s reason to think Trump’s DOJ didn’t want to look too closely at pursuing criminal cases against his close associates.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/report-bipartisan-group-of-senators-wanted-doj-to-investigate-stephen-bannon/

Senate committee sought investigation of Bannon, raised concerns about Trump family testimony

Stephen K. Bannon speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 23 in National Harbor, Md. (Michael Brochstein / TNS)

By DEL QUENTIN WILBER , CHRIS MEGERIAN, SARAH D. WIRE, JENNIFER HABERKORN

AUG. 14, 20207:44 PM UPDATED 8 PM

WASHINGTON —  The Senate Intelligence Committee has sent a bipartisan letter to the Justice Department asking federal prosecutors to investigate Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump confidant, for potentially lying to lawmakers during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times, was signed by the panel’s then-chairman, Republican Sen. Richard M. Burr, and its ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner.

For the record:

10:57 AM, Aug. 15, 2020A previous version of this article reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee referred the Bannon case to the U.S. attorney’s office after Robert S. Mueller III testified to the panel about his investigation. The case was referred to the federal prosecutors three months after Mueller’s report was released, but before he testified.

It also raised concerns about testimony provided by family members and confidants of President Trump that appeared to contradict information provided by a former deputy campaign chairman to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Those it identified as providing such conflicting testimony were the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.

The letter, which has not before been made public, was sent July 19, 2019, to Deborah Curtis, a top prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. It is not clear what action the Justice Department has taken on the referral. Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.

“As you are aware, the Committee is conducting an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” the letter states. “As part of that inquiry, and as a result of witness interviews and document production, we now have reason to believe that the following individuals may have committed a criminal act.”

The letter then names Bannon, the chief executive of the 2016 Trump campaign and later a top White House strategist, and two other men — Erik Prince, a private security contractor, and Sam Clovis, who served as co-chairman of Trump’s campaign.

Criminal referrals from Capitol Hill have been somewhat common since Trump took office in 2017. But this one is rare because it involves the bipartisan leaders of a Senate panel that conducted its own probe without devolving into the partisan bickering that consumed its counterpart in the House of Representatives.

Disclosure of the letter comes as the Senate Intelligence Committee is close to releasing its final report on the panel’s own investigation into Russian election meddling.

“The Committee will not discuss referrals,” said a spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the committee. “And those who in order to score cheap political points are speculating on or claim to know the identities of those referred are committing a grotesque injustice.”

Rubio took over the chairmanship after Burr stepped down amid an investigation into insider trading ahead of the pandemic.

A spokeswoman for Warner declined to comment.

According to the letter, the committee believed Bannon may have lied about his interactions with Erik Prince, a private security contractor; Rick Gerson, a hedge fund manager; and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian sovereign fund.

All were involved in closely scrutinized meetings in the Seychelles before Trump’s inauguration.

The committee also believed Prince, best known as the founder of the former mercenary company Blackwater and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, may have lied about his interactions with Dmitriev.

No charges were filed in connection with the meetings. But investigators suspected that the men may have been seeking to arrange a clandestine back-channel between the incoming Trump administration and Moscow. It’s unclear from the committee’s letter what Bannon and Prince might have lied about, but he and Prince have told conflicting stories about the Seychelles meeting.

Prince said he returned to the United States and updated Bannon about his conversations; Bannon said that never happened, according to the special counsel’s office.

“It’s impossible to respond to something I’ve never heard about before,” said William Burck, a lawyer for Bannon. Burck said he never heard from the U.S. attorney’s office about his client.

Matthew L. Schwartz, a lawyer for Prince, defended his client’s cooperation with Capitol Hill and Mueller’s office.

“There is nothing new for the Department of Justice to consider, nor is there any reason to question the Special Counsel’s decision to credit Mr. Prince and rely on him in drafting its report,” he said.

The committee also asked the Justice Department to investigate Sam Clovis, a former co-chairman of the Trump campaign, for possibly lying about his interactions with Peter W. Smith, a Republican donor who led a secret effort to obtain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

Clovis could not be reached.

In the two page-letter, the committee raised concerns that testimony given to it by the president’s family and advisors contradicted what Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign chairman, told the Special Counsel about when people within the Trump campaign knew about a June 9 meeting at Trump tower with a Russian lawyer.

When the meeting became public, Trump Jr. initially claimed it was about Russian adoptions, but emails written by Trump Jr. that were later made public showed he had agreed to the meeting, but because he had been assured that the Russian lawyer had “official documents and information” that would “incriminate” Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president. The email said the information would “be very useful to your father.”

The music promoter who arranged the meeting, Rob Goldstone, told Trump Jr. that the damaging information on Clinton was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. replied: “If it’s what you say, I love it.”

Gates, a longtime deputy to Manafort, was one of the highest-ranking Trump campaign advisors to “flip” on the president, and he was a foundational witness during the Mueller investigation.

Gates told the special prosecutor that in the days before the June 9, 2016, meeting, Trump Jr. announced at a “regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation,” according to the report of the investigation’s findings.

Trump Jr., Kushner, Hicks and Manafort denied prior knowledge of the meeting in interviews with the committee, according to the committee’s letter, which offered transcripts as proof. A White House spokeswoman, as well as lawyers for Kushner and Hicks, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We are fully confident in the testimony and information provided by Donald J. Trump, Jr.,” said Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for the president’s son.

Lying to Congress is a felony, and two Trump allies — Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, and Roger Stone, his longtime political advisor and self-described dirty trickster — were charged with the crime during the special counsel investigation. Cohen pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison, though he was recently released on home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stone was convicted at trial. Atty. Gen. William Barr caused an uproar when he waded into the case and pressed prosecutors to reduce their recommended sentence. After four career prosecutors left the case in protest, a federal judge sentenced Stone to just over three years in prison. Trump last month commuted Stone’s sentence just before he was supposed to report to prison.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-14/senate-committee-sought-investigation-of-bannon-raised-concerns-about-trump-family-testimony

Bannon forged a lucrative financial relationship with a mysterious Chinese billionaire who was sought

Bannon’s Work With Wanted Chinese Billionaire Began Shortly After He Left White House
Stephen K. Bannon, once President Trump’s top political adviser, struck up a business relationship with a mysterious and wanted Chinese billionaire just after his White House job ended.

Bannon’s Work With Wanted Chinese Billionaire Began Shortly After He Left White House
Stephen K. Bannon, once President Trump’s top political adviser, struck up a business relationship with a mysterious and wanted Chinese billionaire just after his White House job ended.

Almost immediately after ending his White House employment, Stephen K.
Bannon, the former chief strategist to President Trump, forged a lucrative financial relationship with a mysterious Chinese billionaire who was sought by Beijing for extradition from the United States.

China’s government had already accused Guo Wengui, a real estate magnate also known as Miles Kwok, of money laundering, bribery and rape when he and Mr. Bannon developed a mutually beneficial relationship that began with a $150,000 loan to Mr. Trump’s onetime confidant, according to a memo written in May 2019 and obtained by The New York Times.

It escalated to a yearlong million-dollar contract, for which Mr. Bannon promised to introduce executives of Guo Media to “media personalities,” according to the news outlet Axios.

Mr. Guo  He has forged relationships with China hard-liners like Mr. Bannon in the United States, has a membership to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., and is seeking asylum while in the United States staying at his palatial apartment overlooking Central Park.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/us/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wengui.html

Bloomberg Businessweek：Steve Bannon Is the Most Dangerous Political Operative in America

Steve Bannon runs the new vast right-wing conspiracy—and he wants to take down both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

By Joshua Green | October 8, 2015

From Bloomberg Businessweek

Photographs by Jeremy Liebman for Bloomberg Businessweek

It’s nearing midnight as Steve Bannon pushes past the bluegrass band in his living room and through a crowd of Republican congressmen, political operatives, and a few stray Duck Dynasty cast members. He’s trying to make his way back to the SiriusXM Patriot radio show, broadcasting live from a cramped corner of the 14-room townhouse he occupies a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court. It’s late February, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is in full swing, and Bannon, as usual, is the whirlwind at the center of the action.

Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, the crusading right-wing populist website that’s a lineal descendant of the Drudge Report (its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, spent years apprenticing with Matt Drudge) and a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained. He’d spent the day at CPAC among the conservative faithful, zipping back and forth between his SiriusXM booth and an unlikely pair of guests he was squiring around: Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s right-wing UKIP party, and Phil Robertson, the bandanna’d, ayatollah-bearded Duck Dynasty patriarch who was accepting a free-speech award. CPAC is a beauty contest for Republican presidential hopefuls. But Robertson, a novelty adornment invited after A&E suspended him for denouncing gays, delivered a wild rant about “beatniks” and sexually transmitted diseases that upstaged them all, to Bannon’s evident delight. “If there’s an explosion or a fire somewhere,” says Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington political editor, “Steve’s probably nearby with some matches.” Afterward, everyone piled into party buses and headed for the townhouse.

“Honey badger don’t give a s---” is the Breitbart motto
Bannon, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker, is the sort of character who would stand out anywhere, but especially in the drab environs of Washington. A mile-a-minute talker who thrums with energy, his sentences speed off ahead of him and spin out into great pileups of nouns, verbs, and grins. With his swept-back blond hair and partiality to cargo shorts and flip-flops, he looks like Jeff Spicoli after a few decades of hard living, and he employs “dude” just as readily.

Ordinarily, Bannon’s townhouse is crypt-quiet and feels like a museum, as it’s faithfully decorated down to its embroidered silk curtains and painted murals in authentic Lincoln-era detail. When I first stopped by in January, about the only sign that I hadn’t teleported back to the 1860s was a picture on the mantle of a smiling woman on a throne with a machine gun in her lap (it was Bannon’s daughter Maureen, a West Point grad and lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division; the throne belonged to Saddam Hussein—or once did). Until Bannon showed up, the only sounds I heard were faint noises from the basement, which might have been the young women he calls the Valkyries, after the war goddesses of Norse mythology who decided soldiers’ fates in battle. More on them later.

On this February night, however, the party is roaring. Along with his CPAC triumph, a secret project he’d conceived was nearing fruition: His lawyers were almost finished vetting a book about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s murky financial dealings that he’s certain will upend the presidential race. “Dude, it’s going to be epic,” he tells me. I sip my “moonshine”—his wink at the Dynasty guests—and wonder, as people often do, whether Bannon is nuts. On my way out, the doorman hands me a gift: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” printed above an image of a honey badger, the insouciant African predator of YouTube fame whose catchphrase, “Honey badger don’t give a s---,” is the Breitbart motto.

Bannon’s life is a succession of Gatsbyish reinventions that made him rich and landed him squarely in the middle of the 2016 presidential race: He’s been a naval officer, investment banker, minor Hollywood player, and political impresario. When former Disney chief Michael Ovitz’s empire was falling to pieces, Bannon sat Ovitz down in his living room and delivered the news that he was finished. When Sarah Palin was at the height of her fame, Bannon was whispering in her ear. When Donald Trump decided to blow up the Republican presidential field, Bannon encouraged his circus-like visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. John Boehner just quit as House speaker because of the mutinous frenzy Bannon and his confederates whipped up among conservatives. Today, backed by mysterious investors and a stream of Seinfeld royalties, he sits at the nexus of what Hillary Clinton once dubbed “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” where he and his network have done more than anyone else to complicate her presidential ambitions—and they plan to do more. But this “conspiracy,” at least under Bannon, has mutated into something different from what Clinton described: It’s as eager to go after establishment Republicans such as Boehner or Jeb Bush as Democrats like Clinton.

“I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats,” says Bannon, by way of explaining his politics. “I wasn’t political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter f---ed things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that Bush had f---ed up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster.”

As befits someone with his peripatetic background, Bannon is a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde figure in the complicated ecosystem of the right—he's two things at once. And he’s devised a method to influence politics that marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com, which helped drive out Boehner, with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, that builds rigorous, fact-based indictments against major politicians, then partners with mainstream media outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the broadest audience. The biggest product of this system is the project Bannon was so excited about at CPAC: the bestselling investigative book, written by GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Published in May by HarperCollins, the book dominated the political landscape for weeks and probably did more to shape public perception of Hillary Clinton than any of the barbs from her Republican detractors.

Jeb Bush is about to come in for the same treatment. On Oct. 19, GAI will publish Schweizer’s e-book, Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich, that examines how Bush enriched himself after leaving the Florida governor’s mansion in 2007. A copy obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek examines Bush’s Florida land deals, corporate board sinecures, and seven-figure salary with Lehman Brothers, whose 2008 bankruptcy touched off the financial crisis. “It’s not as cinematic as the Clintons, with their warlords and Russian gangsters and that whole cast of bad guys,” says Bannon. “Bush is more prosaic. It’s really just grimy, low-energy crony capitalism.”

While attacking the favored candidates in both parties at once may seem odd, Bannon says he’s motivated by the same populist disgust with Washington that’s animating candidates from Trump to Bernie Sanders. Like both, Bannon is having a bigger influence than anyone could have reasonably expected. But in the Year of the Outsider, it's perhaps fitting that a figure like Bannon, whom nobody saw coming, would roil the national political debate.

Bannon’s Bulldogs, at the “Breitbart Embassy”: Alex Swoyer, Jarrett Stepman, Julia Hahn. Back row: Bigz Aloysious Bigirwa, Jordan Schachtel, Larry Solov, Alex Marlow, Bannon, Matthew Boyle, Edwin Mora.

Most days, Bannon can be found in his Hyde persona, in the Washington offices of Breitbart News. Operating from the basement of his townhouse—known to all as the Breitbart Embassy—Breitbart’s pirate crew became tribunes of the rising Tea Party movement after Barack Obama’s election, bedeviling GOP leaders and helping to foment the 2013 government shutdown. The site has also made life hell for Democrats by, for example, orchestrating the career-ending genital tweeting misfortune that cost New York Representative Anthony Weiner his seat in Congress in 2011. Tipped to Weiner’s proclivity for sexting with female admirers, Bannon says, the site paid trackers to follow his Twitter account 24 hours a day and eventually intercepted a crotch shot Weiner inadvertently made public. The ensuing scandal culminated in the surreal scene, carried live on television, of Andrew Breitbart hijacking Weiner’s press conference and fielding questions from astonished reporters.

On occasion, this partisan zeal has led to egregious errors. Just before our lunch in January, a Breitbart reporter published an article assailing Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch—but went after the wrong woman. She wasn’t, as the site reported, the Loretta Lynch who was once part of Bill Clinton’s defense team. The embarrassed reporter asked for time off. Bannon, allergic to any hint of concession, refused: “I told him, ‘No. In fact, you’re going to write a story every day this week.’ ” He shrugs. “We’re honey badgers,” he explains. “We don’t give a s---.”

But Bannon realizes that politics is sometimes more effective when it’s subtle. So he’s nurtured a Dr. Jekyll side: In 2012 he became founding chairman of GAI, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization staffed with lawyers, data scientists, and forensic investigators. “What Peter and I noticed is that it’s facts, not rumors, that resonate with the best investigative reporters,” Bannon says, referring to GAI’s president. Established in Tallahassee to study crony capitalism and governmental malfeasance, GAI has collaborated with such mainstream news outlets as Newsweek, ABC News, and CBS’s 60 Minutes on stories ranging from insider trading in Congress to credit card fraud among presidential campaigns. It's essentially a mining operation for political scoops that now churns out books like Clinton Cash and Bush Bucks.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/

Trump Breaks With Bannon, Saying He Has ‘Lost His Mind’

By Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman

Jan. 3, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump excommunicated his onetime chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, from his circle on Wednesday, ending for now a partnership of convenience that transformed American politics while raising questions about the future of the nationalist-populist movement they cultivated together.

The rupture came after Mr. Bannon was quoted in a new book disparaging the president’s children, asserting that Donald Trump Jr. had been “treasonous” in meeting with Russians and calling Ivanka Trump “dumb as a brick.” Mr. Trump, described by his spokeswoman as “furious, disgusted,” fired back by saying that Mr. Bannon had “lost his mind.”

In a written statement, the president excoriated Mr. Bannon as a self-promoting exaggerator who had “very little to do with our historic victory” in the 2016 presidential election and was “only in it for himself.” Rather than representing Mr. Trump’s hard-core political base or supporting his agenda to “make America great again,” Mr. Bannon was “simply seeking to burn it all down,” the president said.

While Mr. Trump had remained in touch with Mr. Bannon after pushing him out of the White House over the summer, the two now appear to have reached a breaking point. “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Mr. Trump said. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

Assuming it lasts — and with Mr. Trump, nothing is ever certain — the schism could test whether he or Mr. Bannon has more resonance with the conservative base that has sustained the president through a tumultuous tenure marked by low poll numbers. Mr. Bannon’s Breitbart News has been a key weapon in Mr. Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party.

Cheering the breakup on Wednesday were establishment Republicans who resent Mr. Bannon’s bomb-throwing style and his vows to wage war on incumbent lawmakers in the party primaries this year. Senate Republicans could barely contain their glee as they redistributed Mr. Trump’s statement blasting Mr. Bannon with the note “in case you missed it” and a smiling face symbol. By afternoon, candidates whom Mr. Bannon has endorsed in a handful of races faced pressure to disavow his remarks about the president’s son.

At the White House on Wednesday morning, aides who had kept a watchful eye on Mr. Bannon’s efforts to make himself a kingmaker saw an opening to finally rid themselves of him. They encouraged the president to hit back publicly, and Mr. Trump went through at least three drafts of a statement with his communications director, Hope Hicks, and other aides before sending out a final version unlike any issued by a president against a top adviser in modern times.

“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was,” Mr. Trump said in the statement. “It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”

A private lawyer representing Mr. Trump sent Mr. Bannon a letter on Wednesday directing him to cease and desist making derogatory comments about the president and his family and threatening a defamation lawsuit. “Legal action is imminent,” said the letter, first reported by ABC News and confirmed by a person close to the president.

Mr. Bannon declined to comment on Wednesday. But people close to him said that he believed that the president would eventually come around because Mr. Trump would need help with his base at a moment when his political muscle appeared to be on the wane. Mr. Bannon’s Breitbart site reported the contretemps but did not return fire against Mr. Trump on Wednesday.

The president was responding to comments attributed to Mr. Bannon in a new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff. The book, due out next Tuesday, was obtained by The Guardian, which first reported Mr. Bannon’s remarks, and New York magazine then posted an excerpt. A copy of the book was later obtained by The New York Times.

In the book, Mr. Bannon was quoted suggesting that Donald Trump Jr.; Jared Kushner, his brother-in-law; and Paul Manafort, then the campaign chairman, had been “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for meeting with Russians after being promised incriminating information on Hillary Clinton during a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers,” Mr. Bannon said after The Times revealed the meeting in July 2017, according to Mr. Wolff’s book.

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the F.B.I. immediately,” Mr. Bannon continued, according to the book.

He also said that the chance that Donald Trump Jr. did not introduce the Russians to his father “is zero,” a supposition rather than an assertion but one that would contradict the president’s insistence that he knew nothing about the meeting at the time.

According to Mr. Wolff, Mr. Bannon also predicted that a special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any coordination with Trump aides would ultimately center on money laundering, an assessment that could lend credibility to an investigation the president has repeatedly called a witch hunt. “They’re going to crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV,” Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying.

Donald Trump Jr. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But he jabbed at Mr. Bannon on Twitter on Wednesday when he reposted a message noting that Alabama now had a Democratic senator. “Thanks Steve,” the younger Mr. Trump wrote. “Keep up the great work.”

The president and his advisers blamed Mr. Bannon for backing Roy S. Moore for the Republican nomination in Alabama and then pressing Mr. Trump into endorsing Mr. Moore even after he was accused of sexual misconduct with several women and girls as young as 14. Mr. Moore ended up losing last month, embarrassing Mr. Trump and souring his already complicated and strained relationship with Mr. Bannon.

Mr. Trump grew more upset about an interview Mr. Bannon gave to Vanity Fair that criticized Mr. Kushner’s contacts with Russians. During his Christmas break in Florida, Mr. Trump stewed and consulted with aides and relatives, according to advisers, but ultimately opted against responding publicly to avoid drawing more attention to Mr. Bannon’s remarks.

But accusing the president’s eldest son of treason crossed the line. “Going after the president’s son in an absolutely outrageous and unprecedented way is probably not the best way to curry favor with anybody,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.

The book presents Mr. Trump as an ill-informed and thoroughly unserious candidate and president, engaged mainly in satisfying his own ego and presiding over a dysfunctional White House. It reports that early in the 2016 campaign, one aide, Sam Nunberg, was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” it quotes Mr. Nunberg as saying, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

The book cites an email from an unnamed White House aide offering a harsh assessment of Mr. Trump’s operation that was said to reflect the view of Gary D. Cohn, the president’s national economics adviser: “It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

The book also asserts that Mr. Cohn and other advisers and associates of Mr. Trump deride him in private, calling him an “idiot,” a “dope” or “dumb” as dirt. Thomas J. Barrack, a friend and adviser to Mr. Trump, was quoted telling a friend that the president is “not only crazy, he’s stupid.”

Reached by telephone on Wednesday, Mr. Barrack said that account was “totally false.” Mr. Barrack added, “It’s clear to anyone who knows me that those aren’t my words and inconsistent with anything I’ve ever said.” He said that Mr. Wolff never ran that quotation by him to ask whether it was accurate.

A longtime media columnist and author, Mr. Wolff brings a high profile, vivid writing style and years of experience but sometimes mixed reviews to the task of chronicling Mr. Trump’s White House. Interview subjects have complained in the past that he took comments meant to be off the record and used them. In a 2004 profile, the journalist Michelle Cottle wrote that “the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created — springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events.”

Mr. Wolff clearly benefited from close cooperation from Mr. Bannon and the book is infused with his views. The author was frequently seen in Mr. Bannon’s office while he was still working in the White House. According to Ms. Sanders, Mr. Wolff spoke with the president just once, for five to seven minutes, in the first month of the administration, when Mr. Trump called Mr. Wolff to thank him for his criticism of a Times article that the president did not like.

Going beyond the president’s pushback on Mr. Bannon, Ms. Sanders attacked the book as a whole, hoping to discredit its reporting. Ms. Sanders released a statement calling it “trashy tabloid fiction” that is “filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House.”

Mr. Wolff, responding by email, said he was “wholly comfortable with my numerous sources.”

Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Reporting was contributed by Eileen Sullivan, Michael Tackett and Emily Cochrane from Washington, Amy Chozick from New York and Jeremy W. Peters from Detroit.

Follow Eileen Sullivan, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman on Twitter: @esullivannyt @peterbakernyt @maggienyt

Trump Chairman's Ex-Wife: Bannon Said "He Doesn't Like Jews"

Former Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon was accused by his ex-wife during divorce proceedings of trying to thwart her efforts to send their children to schools with large Jewish student populations.

Claudia RosenbaumBuzzFeed News ReporterAndrew KaczynskiBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on August 26, 2016,

Donald Trump's campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, was accused by his ex-wife during divorce proceedings of trying to thwart her efforts to send their children to private schools with large numbers of Jewish students, citing his disdain for "whiny brats."

"He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats' and that he didn’t want the girls to go to school with Jews," his ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, claimed in court fillings reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

Bannon's spokesperson, Alexandra Preate, denied that he ever made the comments.

"Mr. Bannon said he never said anything like that and proudly sent the girls to Archer for their middle school and high school education," Preate said.

In his response filed in court, Bannon said he was cut out of the selection process altogether.

Pursuant to the express language of our Judgment, my obligation to pay any private school expenses is conditioned on my being consulted and approving the private school.

I was never consulted about the selection of the proposed school and no effort was made to give me the opportunity to participate in the process.

I do not support the children attending a secular school and I do not agree with the or approve the unilateral selection made by (Piccard)."

Attempts to reach Piccard were not immediately successful.

The accusations are the latest to come out of a court record that has come under scrutiny after the former head of Breitbart News was tapped to lead Trump's Republican presidential campaign. They also come on the heels of Hillary Clinton accusing Trump of "taking hate groups mainstream" at a campaign rally, citing Bannon's role and the Republican candidate's association with British politician Nigel Farage.

Bannon was also charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness after allegedly grabbing his then-wife's neck and wrist during a dispute in 1996, and smashing a phone when she tried to call 911, according to court documents.

A Santa Monica police report also detailed the incident. However, the case was later dropped when his ex-wife failed to appear in court.

On Friday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told BuzzFeed News she didn’t know if he was aware of the incident.

In the divorce declaration filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2007, Piccard claimed Bannon had demanded their daughters "go to a strict structured Catholic School."

At one point, Piccard alleged Bannon called administrators at the private school and threatened to sue them if they accepted their children.

"During a joint visit to see Westland School and Willows Community School, [Bannon] asked the director why there were so many Chanukah books in the library. After we saw Willows he asked me if it bothered me that the school used to be a Temple. I said no and asked why he asked ... he did not respond," Piccard alleged.

Piccard also cited an email exchange dated March 31, 2007, in which she told Bannon she didn't know what percentage of Jewish girls made up the student population at the Archer School for Girls.

Piccard wrote in her filings that she asked Bannon why he cared, adding that she had "not been raising the girls to be prejudiced against Jews or anyone else for that matter."

Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager Was Charged In A Domestic Violence Case