Steve Bannon, his roving life and the Jacuzzi ‘covered in acid'

In the three years before he became Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon lived as a virtual nomad in a quest to build a populist political insurgency.

No presidential adviser in recent memory has followed such a mysterious path to the White House. It was as though he was a man with no fixed address. Bannon told a friend in 2015 he was living in multiple cities, including Washington, New York, London and Miami.

He owned a house and condo in Southern California where he had entertainment and consulting businesses. He claimed Florida as his residence, registering to vote in 2014 in Miami. He told authorities a year earlier that he lived on Opechee Drive, Miami, with his third ex-wife, Diane Clohesy. They divorced in California in 2009.

Bannon also routinely stayed in Washington and New York as he engineered the expansion of Breitbart News and hosted a live Breitbart radio programme. By 2015, Bannon stayed so often at Breitbart’s townhouse headquarters on Capitol Hill that he kept a picture of a daughter on a mantle piece.

In February, 2015, Bannon ended the water and sewer service at Opechee Drive, and switched the service to nearby Onaway Drive, records show. Bannon changed his voter registration to Onaway Drive.

The Opechee house was left in disrepair, according to an email between the landlord and Bannon and interviews with the landlord. Padlocks had been placed on interior doors — or the doors had been removed altogether. A hot tub was destroyed. “[E]ntire Jacuzzi bathtub seems to have been covered in acid,” the landlord wrote in the February 2015 email to Bannon. “I’m out of town,” Bannon replied. “is there any way u can talk with Diane and sort things out ???”

The damage was estimated at more than US$14,000, according to an accounting by the landlords, who kept the US$9800 security deposit from Bannon and Clohesy.

At the same time Bannon said he was living with his ex-wife, she was under investigation. In October 2013, Clohesy became ensnared in an undercover investigation of a jail guard suspected of smuggling drugs and other contraband to another man, a friend of hers in the MiamiDade County Pre-trial Detention Centre, according to an arrest warrant for the jail guard first reported by the the Miami New Times.

The issue of Bannon’s legal residency has been simmering since mid last year, shortly after he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign. The Guardian, in an August 26 story, speculated that Bannon may have signed an oath that he was a Florida resident to take advantage of the state’s lack of state income taxes. In California, income tax can exceed 12 per cent.

State prosecutors in Miami have an active investigation into Bannon’s assertions that he was a Florida resident and qualified to vote in the state from 2014 to 2016. Because state laws do not clearly define residency, making a false registration case can be difficult.

Bannon registered to vote last year in New York from a Manhattan condo and later cast an absentee ballot. Because he was registered in two places, he was later removed from Florida’s voter rolls.