Steve Bannon Profited From Business Ties to Harvey Weinstein

Steve Bannon, having “resigned” from his position as White House Chief Strategist, has returned to his old job heading up Breitbart News, the conservative website now shown to have employed and endorsed white supremacists.

Bannon has been using that platform of late to attack Democrats who received donations from Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer and alleged rapist who just fled the country to get treatment for sex addiction. Weinstein’s fall has tainted many Democrat campaigns, and has forced statements of revulsion from seemingly every figure in both show business and politics.

Breitbart has berated Democrats for these connections to Weinstein, but now THR reports that Bannon himself was a business partner of Weinstein’s once upon a time.

Back in 2005 (as in, a year after The N.Y. Times killed a story about Weinstein being a sexual predator), Bannon was the chairman of a small DVD company called Genius Products. They went into business with the Weinstein brothers, giving the Weinsteins a 70 percent ownership stake in the venture. Here’s a quote from Bannon, in one of multiple calls to investors about how excited he was to work with Harvey Weinstein:

“We are extremely honored to be in business with the new Weinstein Company,” Bannon told investors […] declaring that “the Weinsteins have the most impressive track record in the film industry” and that “Bob and Harvey are two of the most prolific studio heads in the history of Hollywood.”

The deal ended in bankruptcy for Genius Products, but that doesn’t mean Bannon didn’t profit. His company, Bannon Strategic Advisers, made half a million dollars from Genius Products, and Bannon himself took in another $200,000 and over $1 million in stock options.

So it’s a little weird that Bannon is calling out Democrats for receiving money from Weinstein. It’s almost like he’s just using Weinstein as fodder to attack them, and doesn’t actually personally mind working with someone who has been accused of rape.