Steve Bannon broadcasts four hours a day on War Room, the podcast he produces and hosts from his home.
He talks about immigration. The deep state. Globalists. China as an existential threat. The mainstream media as the enemy of the people. Election integrity. MAGA purity — who is loyal to Trump and who is not.
Every episode is framed as a battle in a larger war for the survival of Western civilization and the American working class. The show airs on Real America’s Voice and ranks among the top 10 political podcasts in the country.
Bannon’s partner, Miles Guo, also did a broadcast, a daily Mandarin livestream on YouTube, Twitter, and GTV, the platform he co-founded with Bannon.
The content was anti-CCP. He positioned himself as the one man brave enough to expose what was really happening inside Beijing.
He would sit in his penthouse overlooking Central Park, or on his yacht, or in his New Jersey mansion, and talk for hours.
Luxury was part of the message. He didn’t need their money. He was fighting for them out of principle.
In between the political content, Guo spoke about investing in GTV stock. G-Clubs memberships. The gold-backed Himalaya cryptocurrency. The farm loan program. These investments were a way to fight against the CCP and get rich in the process.
Unlike Bannon, Guo no longer broadcasts.
For the last three years, Guo has been at Brooklyn MDC. His sentencing on nine felony counts — including racketeering, wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering — is scheduled for April.
Guo’s sentencing guidelines, driven by a billion-dollar loss and thousands of victims, point toward a 20-year minimum.
William Je
Guo and Bannon’s other partner is William Je.
Je was indicted on 12 counts — wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. He has not been tried because he fled the United States and remains at large.
The federal indictment in the Southern District of New York — Case No. 23 Cr. 118 — identifies Je as “the financial architect and key money launderer” for the Guo-Bannon enterprise.
The investment fraud center was GTV Media Group — a video platform that Guo said would give Chinese people around the world a free press outside CCP control.
Investors with $100,000 could invest directly. If they didn’t — and most didn’t — they could pool their smaller investment with others, and the money would go into GTV through an entity called Voice of Guo Media.
The promotional materials explained: “From a business perspective, there is no risk whatsoever, so long as you have trust.”
Thousands of Chinese emigrants trusted and lost everything they invested.
Where Does Bannon Fit in?
Bannon co-founded GTV with Guo. Bannon stood onstage at GTV launch events and promotional gatherings vouching for the investment.
He was a former White House chief strategist, a known figure in American conservative politics. He was anti-CCP.
When more than $450 million came in, William Je moved some of it to GETTR — the social media platform Bannon chaired — and additional funds to Bannon’s production company, advisory firm, and media hub.
Bannon was at the front end, vouching for the investment that brought in the money. He was at the back end collecting from the entities to which the money flowed.
The indictment says Je operated the Himalaya Exchange through corporate entities he owned abroad, and ran a network of more than 500 bank accounts.
Je moved hundreds of millions of dollars of the savings of Chinese immigrants through accounts in the United States, the Bahamas, and the United Arab Emirates.
Je inserted enough shell companies, jurisdictions, and layers of nominal ownership to make the transactions appear legitimate.
The full extent of Bannon’s profiting is unknown; the bankruptcy trustee is working to determine it.
So far, the trustee has identified $57.6 million flowing from Guo to Je via shell companies to Bannon entities.
Luxury for Guo
It was easier to pin a number on Guo. Guo spent his money openly.
He bought:
A $67.5 million penthouse overlooking Central Park at the Sherry-Netherland.
A $26.5 million, 21-bedroom mansion in Mahwah, New Jersey;
The Lady May, a $37 million yacht,
A $4.4 million custom Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, a $3.5 million red Ferrari,
For extra driving pleasure, a $1 million Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster. Federal agents found it in the six-car garage at his Connecticut mansion during a raid.
When he took to the friendly skies, he used his $3.5 million Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, a seven-seater, or his $50 million Bombardier Global XRS private jet.
Guo also bought two mattresses at $36,000 each, made with horsetail hair and hand-tufted. Horsetail is temperature-regulating and doesn’t compress; the key to sleeping well for a man swindling a billion from people who believe in him.
Guo now sleeps in a concrete bunk with a thin foam mattress at MDC, which costs about $50.
When he and Bannon were at the height of their enterprise, Guo purchased a $60,000 modular microLED display TV with no bezels, self-illuminating pixels, and 8K resolution.
MDC Brooklyn TVs do not have 8k resolution. In fact, individual cells have no TVs. There are communal televisions mounted in common areas that run about $300 apiece.
And Guo, though now wearing prison garb, used to wear custom Brioni suits costing $18,000.
Bannon Contrast
His partner, Bannon, on the other hand, kept no yacht, no penthouse, no Ferrari.
He bought Walmart shirts. Multiple shirts layered on top of each other — a collared shirt under a casual overshirt, both untucked, both looking like they came out of a bag.
Unshaven, hair uncombed. He described it himself as intentional. The man of the people is too busy fighting to care about appearances.
It is a costume as calculated as Guo’s Brioni suits, in the opposite direction. Guo’s costume says wealth; Bannon’s says authenticity. The slob look is the point. That is the con within the con.
The Architect
The third partner was a hybrid. And far less known.
William Je, a dual citizen of Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, spent 30 years running equity capital markets across Greater China for Macquarie Banking Group, building securities operations in Hong Kong.
For the Bannon-Guo enterprise, Je founded Hamilton Investment Management in the British Virgin Islands, with offices in London. He registered its American branch in New York in March 2018.
Through Hamilton, money flowed through Je’s shells, his London offices, his Cayman Islands funds, a Canadian shell in Markham, Ontario, and into Bannon’s production company, social media platform, and advisory firm.
The CCP Connection
Je remained in the background, possibly because he was an affiliate of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
He had held a position on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — the CCP’s United Front operation — in Chongqing from 2008 to 2018. The United Front is Beijing’s system for cultivating influence abroad.
Je listed his membership under Honors and Awards on his LinkedIn profile and confirmed it in a 2022 interview with The Daily Telegraph, republished on his website.
The man who moved the investments of anti-CCP Chinese into Bannon’s account was a member of the CCP’s influence team.
If you were looking for the perfect con, this was it. Steal from anti-communists. Partner with communists. Sell anti-communism as the product.
The Pipeline
The bankruptcy Trustee identified some of the ways Je got money to Bannon.
$56.6 million went to GETTR USA Inc. — the social media platform that Bannon chaired — via transfers that the Trustee now seeks to recover as fraudulent. $270,000 went directly to Warroom Broadcasting, Bannon’s production company. $250,000 went to Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc. for purported advisory services. $500,000 went to Whole Alpha Trading LLC, which the Trustee identifies as a central payment hub for Bannon-related media operations.
Total documented so far: $57,619,740.
The Obstruction
On September 20 and 21, 2022, federal agents seized approximately $335 million from Himalaya Exchange accounts.
Three weeks later, on October 13, 2022 — after Je’s failed attempt to move $46 million out of US jurisdiction — Bannon received another payment of $270,000, wired to Warroom Broadcasting.
The Newnoah Chain
Guo’s arrest came in March 2023. Je disappeared.
Bannon started a Free Miles Guo effort while Guo sat in MDC awaiting trial.
Money that originated with Chinese immigrant investors was now being used to pay American writers, media figures, and social media influencers to produce content defending Guo.
The Bannon campaign attacked the federal prosecutors and the bankruptcy Trustee trying to recover what was stolen.
Newnoah Consulting Inc., incorporated in Markham, Ontario, in November 2022, paid the American influencers and writers through a TD Bank account in Canada.
The Bannon-linked entity at the center of this — Whole Alpha Trading LLC, previously Art Operation LLC, which the Trustee identifies as a central payment hub for Bannon’s operations — received $500,000 from Guo’s shell companies and contracted with Newnoah for $300,000 in media services.
If the Trustee’s account is accurate, Bannon’s effort to free his convicted partner netted him $200,000.
Freebird
Though Bannon escaped indictment in this scheme, in August 2020, federal agents boarded Miles Guo’s yacht and arrested him for We Build the Wall. Trump pardoned Bannon on his last day in office.
New York State came after him next for the same scheme because a presidential pardon does not apply to state charges. He pleaded guilty to a felony and received a conditional discharge. No prison. No probation. He told reporters he felt like a million bucks, far less than he had taken.
We Build the Wall targeted American patriots who wanted to secure the border. Bannon told his audience that their donations were going to the wall construction.
The lead promoter, triple amputee veteran Brian Kolfage, publicly swore he and Bannon would not take a penny.
Bannon took a million. Kolfage got paid a secret salary.
Kolfage, along with Bannon partners Andrew Badolato and Michael Shea, went to prison.
Boris, Bannon and Brandon
On yet another Bannon enterprise, Let’s Go Brandon, Bannon sought the investments of American conservatives who wanted independence from the financial system they believed was rigged against them.
Bannon said the crypto token he offered was decentralized and immune to account freezes and financial censorship.
According to a federal class action filed on February 12, 2026, Bannon and his partner, Boris Epshteyn, secretly acquired ownership and control of the token without paying for it, while investors financed the acquisition through their transaction fees.
Bannon and Epshteyn had told investors the token was decentralized — that no one could freeze their wallets or block access to their money, the way banks and financial institutions could. In reality, Bannon and Epshteyn had secretly written a backdoor into the token’s underlying code, giving them the power to freeze any investor’s wallet at will.
Investors who tried to sell found their wallets locked. Then Bannon and Epshteyn shut down the project, promised to return the money, and never did.
Investors lost millions.
In two of the three operations — the Chinese diaspora fraud and We Build the Wall — Bannon collected millions while his partners went to prison or became fugitives. He was never charged in either.
Why Bannon Was Not Charged
Prosecutors may have concluded that indicting Bannon was pointless. Trump pardoned him for his role in We Build the Wall. A second indictment in a federal case, while Trump was returning to power, was unlikely to result in prison time, regardless of the evidence.
To convict, you have to prove the defendant knew the money was fraud proceeds and intended to participate in the scheme. Bannon’s lawyers would argue that he was paid as a consultant and media figure for legitimate services and that he had no specific knowledge that the money was stolen.
The shell company transfers of money from one company to another helped to make that argument available to Bannon. Je built the pipeline so that every Bannon payment went through shells, through Hamilton entities, through intermediaries. It may have been engineered well enough that prosecutors concluded they could not prove the knowledge element beyond a reasonable doubt, and that taking on a Trump ally with a large megaphone would be difficult.
The government nevertheless seized money from Bannon’s platform as criminal fraud proceeds, named every organization he co-founded as an instrument of the fraud, and traced the conspiracy to the same month his payments began.
Patterns?
There seems to be a pattern. The people around Bannon go to prison. The people who trust him lose their money.
To many, Steve Bannon is an American hero who saw things before anyone else did. He continues his successful podcast. He is invited to serve as a keynote speaker at prestigious events.
He may be the man Abe Lincoln said does not exist.
Maybe you can fool all of the people all of the time.
See also: The Miles Guo and Steve Bannon Money Trail; Two Frauds, One Playbook: How Steve Bannon Walked Away Twice
More to come on the Guo-Bannon billion dollar enterprise…
and other Bannon enterprises…
