Stephen Bannon, the combative chairman of the right-wing website Breitbart News until he took a leave of absence last month to be CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has been accused of making inappropriate and sexually charged comments, describing subordinates with words like “c-nt.”

Former Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro called his ex-boss a “nasty” man known for “verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies” in a recent column. Kurt Bardella, who acted as Breitbart’s spokesperson until he resigned in protest earlier this year, told POLITICO Bannon operated “as the dictator of Breitbart.”


In interviews, a dozen former Bannon employees and associates agreed with those scathing assessments of the man Trump has turned to to oversee his campaign, painting a picture of a boss who repeatedly used inappropriate language in front of his employees and in many cases directed expletive-laced tirades at them. At Breitbart, the former employees said, he would regularly order subordinates to write stories that supported his allies and tore down adversaries, such as conservative radio host Glenn Beck, and admonished them when their posts didn’t toe his line. But though Bannon would berate his employees using language more suited to his past in the Navy, former and current staffers, including three women currently at Breitbart, also described examples of his immense generosity, often in the form of monetary help for staffers in need.

Several ex-staffers also described leaving the website’s orbit as a nerve-wracking ordeal -- “indentured servitude in limbo,” one former employee alleged in a legal filing -- due in part to what they saw as Bannon’s attempts to sabotage their future employment prospects. While many of the former employees said they did not know Bannon was charged with domestic violence against his ex-wife 20 years ago until POLITICO’s report last week, they did mention rumors of previous gender discrimination and sexual harassment accusations that have since been unearthed by other news organizations.

“He’s an evil genius, is how I would put it,” said a former staffer who worked with Bannon, and who like many of the former staffers and associates interviewed did so on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Bannon took over Breitbart News after the sudden death in 2012 of its puckish founder, Andrew Breitbart, a protege of Matt Drudge who helped launch The Huffington Post. Bannon, who was already a well-known conservative filmmaker and was on Breitbart’s board, was brought on to help run the site alongside Larry Solov, a longtime friend of Breitbart’s who is now the company’s CEO.

Breitbart, a much-beloved figure on the right, ran his eponymous news outlet as a conservative thorn in the side of Democrats, going after targets like the liberal group ACORN. Under Bannon’s direction, the site has grown in size to about 12 different verticals and outposts in London and Jerusalem, with an audience of 18 million unique visitors last month. Bannon’s Breitbart News, which describes itself as “hard-hitting, no holds-barred journalism along with world-class aggregation” and a site “written specifically for the new generation of independent and conservative thinkers,” has also evolved into a home for the populist nationalist movement that has fueled Trump’s rise. The site went after establishment Republicans and threw its support behind Trump early on in the 2016 primaries, for which it was rewarded with exclusive interviews, access, and shoutouts by the candidate.

For months, pundits and political operatives have complained that Breitbart has become Trump’s homepage – Shapiro, who resigned earlier this year when, in his view, the site sided with Trump’s campaign over its own reporter, has called it Trump’s “Pravda.” Critics accused Breitbart of colluding with the Trump campaign, and Bannon made it clear, Bardella said, that he was in constant contact with the candidate himself. So when Trump hired Bannon amid his latest campaign shakeup this August, many Breitbart-watchers saw it as the natural progression of their relationship -- an effort by Trump to surround himself with like-minded operatives in sync with his populist-nationalist message.

For Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, Bannon “has helped bring a newfound focus and sense of urgency to the campaign, and he’s been great to work with.” But several of those interviewed told POLITICO that Bannon’s idea of leadership can be toxic.

“He is someone who is prone to a lot of tirades and acts as a bully. If anyone thought [former Trump campaign manager] Corey Lewandowski was challenging that way, wait ‘til someone gets a curse-laden phone call from Steve at any hour,” Bardella told POLITICO on the day Bannon was hired.

Former staffers also said they witnessed or were told by colleagues of slurs being flung at employees who angered the boss (Bannon’s alleged use of the word c--nt to describe former reporter Michelle Fields has already been reported). Two recounted Bannon’s use of nicknames for his staff -- cruel pejoratives that implied they were “expendable, low-life creatures,” as one former employee characterized it. “Grundoon," the gibberish-speaking diapered groundhog from the comic strip Pogo, was a favorite, one former staffer said: “It refers to a low-life, a low-intelligence worker.”

"It would not pass for any normal work atmosphere -- the type of language they use, how they spoke to people or about people in the news or who we were fighting with,” the former employee said. “It was all very salty, to put it mildly.”

Though Alexandra Preate, a spokesperson representing Bannon and Breitbart News, arranged statements from current employees after POLITICO asked to speak with them, she declined to comment on a list of detailed questions regarding the allegations presented here.

Alex Marlow, Breitbart’s current editor-in-chief, defended Bannon’s “tough love” approach to management, arguing it gets results from a generation that isn’t disciplined enough. “Steve Bannon is one of the top political and media visionaries working anywhere, and he may be the foremost populist intellectual in the world,” Marlow said in a written statement. “His energy is infectious, and he's been an invaluable mentor to me. The media attack him over his ‘tough love’ approach, but that's only because he's highly effective. Having sat at his right hand for years -- and as a member of ‘Generation Wuss’ -- I can say authoritatively that if America had more Bannons, we'd have more disciplined, hardworking, patriotic young people and far fewer precious snowflakes."

One of Bannon’s “tough love” habits, according to several of the former employees who spoke with POLITICO, was his scorched-earth approach to pending staff departures. The process of leaving Breitbart was often long and arduous due in part to the long and intricate contracts signed by employees. For some, leaving took months of groundwork. Lawyers would sometimes need to be brought in, and in some cases, lawsuits would follow.

And sometimes, negative stories would start appearing on Breitbart.com attacking the departing employee.

Days after Shapiro left the site, for instance, Breitbart posted -- and then deleted -- an article mocking him as an “ambitious conservative gadfly.” (Joel B. Pollak, an editor at large, later apologized and said he had written it “as part of an effort to make light of a significant company event” and it was published “as a result of a misunderstanding.”)

Dana Loesch, now a radio host with The Blaze and formerly an editor of the “Big Journalism” vertical at Breitbart, sued the site a few months after Andrew Breitbart’s death in 2012. Loesch alleged in her suit that executives wouldn’t let her out of her contract and that they attempted to “sabotage” her future employment “through public misstatements and private threats to sue those who would otherwise employ” her. The suit was ultimately settled.

"I can’t discuss my departure or time there, but I can say that the number of people who have fled Bannon News since I left and have found happier employment elsewhere speaks for itself,” Loesch said in an email. "It’s plain to see that the site is used as a grievance tool of Steve Bannon, irrelevant of primary politics. I only hope Trump doesn’t anger Bannon in some way and find himself in Bannon’s crosshairs, as has occurred with so many others.”

“Everyone wondered why getting out was so difficult,” one person with intimate knowledge of Breitbart’s culture said, “but working at Breitbart was like indentured servitude. It was like only the way you could leave is if they fired you."

One former Breitbart employee said that working with Bannon was a driving force in his departure. “I was daily at war with Steve Bannon,” he said. “My life there was trying to keep them from doing [crazy] things.”

Back in March, when Fields announced she had quit her job due to Breitbart’s lack of support over an incident with Lewandowski, who was then still Trump’s campaign manager, Breitbart seemed torn on how to handle the situation. The site tepidly defended Fields initially, while also publishing posts that seemed to contradict her story. Fields quit, as did six of her co-workers, including Bardella and Shapiro. (Lewandowski was charged by police with battery, but Florida prosecutors declined to pursue the case.)

But her exit did not end hostilities between herself and her former employer.

When Fields went to work for The Huffington Post, Breitbart Washington editor Matt Boyle wrote up a note that he was trying to pass off as being written by progressive activists protesting her hiring. Despite the fact that Boyle’s name was on the email, several former staffers expressed their suspicion that Bannon was behind it, though none offered proof.

"Bannon gives them directives like this that compromise them. He has a long enemies list. They tried to do it to me, too, when I left," a former Breitbart staffer said. (Boyle declined to comment, though he sent a separate statement about Bannon, and Fields declined to comment.)

At least three former staffers claimed they faced similar kinds of interference as they sought employment after leaving Breitbart. They shared their stories with POLITICO off the record but requested anonymity and asked that their stories not be told in detail because of strict non-disclosure agreements they’d signed -- and because they still fear retaliation.

"I gave people there who have dealt with it the name of a therapist,” said another person familiar with Breitbart’s staff.

The best way to leave Breitbart, several former staffers said, was to make the company want to part ways with you. Otherwise, moving on to a higher-profile job, or quitting in a fiery public blaze, would make it seem like Breitbart “lost.” And Bannon, former staffers said, always needed to “win.”

"You have to make it their idea to get rid of you,” said the person with intimate knowledge of Breitbart’s culture.

According to Bannon’s ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, similar tactics were used with his own family. She alleged in court documents related to their child-support arrangement and obtained by POLITICO that in 2000, Bannon vowed to threaten “every school” to which she wished to send their twin girls for their elementary education.

After she got the children accepted to one private elementary school in Malibu, Piccard said in the documents, Bannon told the head of the school that the “children would not be attending the school and if he tried to enroll them, he and the school would be sued and ultimately would be shut down.”

Then, Piccard said, after she got the girls into a public school in a neighboring district, Bannon told the public-school principal that “he should not let the girls get settled there since he would be coming to the school the next day with a Court order and would be taking them to their local public school.”

According to the documents, Bannon never followed through with the threat and the girls attended the school through the fifth grade.

Years later, Piccard alleged, Bannon complained that the Archer School for Girls, a private secondary school where the twins had been accepted in 2007, had too many Jewish students.

“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,” the ex-wife wrote in court documents, as first reported by the New York Daily News and BuzzFeed. (Preate, the Bannon spokesperson, denied in a statement to BuzzFeed that he had made such comments.)

Handwritten letters in the court documents indicated the girls’ desire to stay at Archer, and after the twins’ first year there, the court ruled that they should remain at the school and ordered Bannon to pay fees and reimburse Piccard for related costs she had already incurred.

Tales of Bannon’s workplace behavior date back decades. In 1993, as an investment banker and acting CEO of Space Biosphere Ventures, the parent company of the Biosphere 2 project in southern Arizona, Bannon vowed to take revenge on crew member Abigail Alling after she broke into the artificial ecosystem to warn others about his management capabilities. Bannon acknowledged, under questioning by a lawyer, that he “vowed to kick (Alling’s) —,” according to a 1996 report in the Tucson Citizen.

According to an audio recording posted by BuzzFeed, Bannon also threatened to “ram it down her f-cking throat” and called Alling a “self-centered, deluded young woman” and a “bimbo.” (“This was a bankruptcy,” the Tuscon Citizen quoted Bannon explaining at the time. “There gets to be a lot of hard feelings and broken dreams.”)

But Bannon had another side as a caring and generous boss, one who would go to great lengths to help his employees, including those he criticized harshly. In a group of 10 statements submitted to POLITICO by Breitbart staff and in background conversations with several former employees, many described a man who would pay out of his own pocket for personal expenses.

“He is a tough boss who has shepherded me to heights I never thought I would see, largely because of that toughness and his loyalty,” said Breitbart Texas editor Brandon Darby, whom several former staffers said Bannon would regularly berate. “When I wanted to bring a voice to citizen journalists in Mexico, he allowed me to do so. He made our Cartel Chronicles project a reality and countless numbers of northern Mexican communities that were marginalized and left voiceless by U.S. media now have a voice. When my young daughter came to live with me full-time, Bannon stepped up and began helping me with a raise and her school tuition, offered me assistance, and made sure I could still have my demanding and rewarding career AND be a great dad. I couldn't have done that without his support. Our relationship is dynamic and often times contentious -- and worth every bit of it. It results in beautiful things and many communities, whether in Mexico, in the Border Patrol agent community, farmers, people who fight human trafficking, etc. have a voice that they would not have if Bannon had not pushed me and supported me in these efforts."

"Steve Bannon is a champion for the little guy," wrote Rebecca Mansour, an editor for the site. "His conservative populism stems from his commitment to looking out for the everyday Americans who are all too often betrayed by the powers that be in D.C. and on Wall Street. Steve is the guy on the playground who stands up for the person being bullied."

“During my five-plus years of working with Breitbart, I experienced a serious illness resulting in complex heart surgery and as CEO, Steve Bannon stood by me when many employers wouldn't have, including continuing to pay me during an extended period of time when I simply couldn't perform my normal workflow,” wrote reporter Dan Riehl. “He was also quick to inquire as to how I was doing during those periods and to continue doing so as I eased my way back into work. I also have firsthand knowledge of his demonstrating the same type of compassion and consideration for more than one other individual associated with Breitbart News. I owe him a profound debt of gratitude for that and am absolutely convinced many employers would not have made the compassionate choices he did in my case."

"Steve Bannon has taught me so much throughout my career in journalism," Boyle said in a statement. "His positive and encouraging management style — where he puts a premium on action and results — is why Breitbart is so much more successful than our competitors. He bleeds competitiveness, and drives us to win. He also truly cares about the success and well-being of his employees as evidenced by the many selfless actions he's taken on behalf of all of us. This is the best news organization to work at hands down, and it's in large part because of the culture Steve has created and fostered here. I wouldn't change a thing."

To one close associate of Breitbart, it was a matter of Bannon wanting to be in control.

"He’s a man running another man’s legacy,” said Brittany Cover, a longtime Republican consultant who through her work with the Republican National Committee and Citizens United was in regular contact with Bannon and is familiar with many Breitbart staffers. "In order to maintain control he has to, in his mind, control everything that goes on there. He makes everyone sign NDAs when they leave. They’re barely getting out, their careers are limping, with a byline where they haven’t had any control, and where they haven’t had a voice.”

This piece has been updated to include the fact that three women currently at Breitbart also submitted statements praising Bannon.