Reports by two American newspapers have revealed that the newly-appointed campaign manager of the US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was charged with domestic violence in the year 1996.
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In a police report obtained by Politico and confirmed by NBC News, she claimed that during a New Year’s argument about finances, she spat at Bannon and he “reached up to her from the driver’s seat of his vehicle and grabbed her left wrist”.
Besides allegedly pressuring his ex-wife not to testify against him in a domestic violence case, Stephen Bannon also complained about the amount of Jewish students at a Los Angeles school, the New York Daily News reported.
According to a new report from the Guardian, Bannon went on to rent a Florida house for his another ex-wife, Tea Party activist Diane Clohesy, but he did not live there, a residence he is reportedly registered to vote at. Bannon’s former wife declined an emergency protection order, the report stated.
Stephen Bannon, the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, has an active voter registration at the house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development.
With Bannon’s appointment Trump also brought on Kellyanne Conway to manage his campaign. “I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he’s helped them, and even recently”.
Asked about the old charges – which were first reported by Politico and the New York Post – a personal spokeswoman for Bannon noted they had been dismissed.
Neighbors of the Coconut Grove home where Bannon is registered to vote told The Guardian the house has been abandoned for three months, and said they had never seen him. Bannon’s wife, who was not named by Politico for the sake of privacy, reportedly looked “very upset” and took “several minutes” to get her thoughts together as she spoke to police. She also said there were past instances of disputes that became physical. The next morning, she said, the noise she made feeding their daughters and his refusal to provide a credit card for grocery shopping started a fight that spilled onto the driveway. Eventually, a Trump spokesman issued the following snippet to The Guardian via email: “Mr Bannon moved to another location in Florida”.
“He pulled her down, as if he was trying to pull [her] into the auto, over the door”, the report said, adding that Bannon also “grabbed at [her] neck” and that she struck at his face to get free.
And that, the divorce document alleges, is because Bannon’s lawyer called her up and told her to get out of town so the case would fail.
Clinton portrayed Bannon as a right-wing extremist who promoted racist, “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women” ideas as chairman of the Breitbart News Network website.
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Mr Bannon, 62, joined the Trump campaign almost two weeks ago after arranging to take a leave of absence from his job running the ultra-conservative news website Breitbart.
