Like just about everybody else these days, Steve Bannon has been pounding the table for the release of the Epstein files, blasting the disgraced financier as a “globalist child molester” and calling for full public transparency. Turns out, though, Bannon wasn’t always so critical of the late billionaire.

As recently as 2019 — as mounting press coverage and renewed investigations were closing in before his arrest at Teterboro Airport on sex trafficking charges, as most everyone else in Epstein’s orbit had already shunned the 66-year-old — Bannon was still standing by his man. The rumpled former Trump aide reportedly advised Epstein from the shadows, joined strategy calls, and ultimately helped stage a behind-the-scenes media makeover, arranging a series of videotaped sessions at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in which Bannon served as his interlocutor. 

The setup looked like a documentary shoot — a small crew, professional lighting, with Bannon lobbing tough, prosecutorial questions from off-camera. They were a kind of debate-prep, seemingly designed to get Epstein ready for an image-changing sit-down interview with a news outlet like 60 Minutes, with Bannon playing the part of Mike Wallace. But Epstein, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, may have footed the bill for it all, throwing ownership of the footage into question.  

The interview never took place — some PR rehabs are just too daunting — but for months now, Bannon has been publicly promoting that footage of his erstwhile friend — 12 to 15 hours, by his own count — as the foundation of a planned docuseries, working title The Monster. He’s been pitching it as journalism, a raw look inside Epstein’s pathology. In fact, though, those tapings seem to have been far from journalistic.​  

According to author Michael Wolff, who was there for the first taping and reviewed transcripts of others — and who first revealed the existence of these tapes in his 2021 book Too Famous — the point wasn’t exposure. It was spin. “There’s no question the tapes were media training,” he tells THR. “And there’s no possible way Epstein would have signed off on them being used in a documentary.”

That context — his alleged financial arrangement with Epstein, the coaching role he played, the purpose of the tapings — has been conspicuously absent from Bannon’s own public commentary about the Epstein scandal over the past few months. The onetime Trump advisor has been among the most vociferous critics of Epstein and has loudly denounced the administration for its refusal to release the Epstein files.  

Bannon, who did not reply to repeated calls and emails, has in the past denied Wolff’s account and reports of his friendship with Epstein. But over the past five years he’s been considerably more hazy about the release of the Epstein tapes, waving off any inquiries about their whereabouts. Then, last March, he appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show and finally spoke about the footage, claiming he was producing a documentary series around them — “maybe for Netflix” or another streamer. “He’s a product of the elite,” Bannon said of Epstein, “and everything that’s been put out about him is not exactly the truth.”

To Wolff, who knew both Bannon and Epstein well, Bannon’s recent attacks on Epstein belies the cozy nature of their relationship. He claims the two men were good friends, meeting sometime around 2017, shortly after Bannon’s forced exit from the Trump White House, and remained close right until his death in August of 2019. During those years, Wolff claims, Bannon was a frequent visitor to both Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and his Paris apartment, and the two exchanged calls and emails almost every day. Their affinity was not altogether surprising: The two men shared a Wall Street background, a taste for the high life and a complicated relationship with Donald Trump — both were close to the president before being iced out. (Bannon’s break with Trump came soon after the publication of Wolff’s bestselling Trump exposé Fire and Fury, for which he was widely rumored to be a major source.)

In fact, it wasn’t until years after Epstein’s alleged prison-cell suicide that Bannon publicly changed his tune on Epstein. By then Bannon was dealing with his own legal problems, convicted in 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison in 2024.

Since Bannon’s release late last year, he’s gone on to reestablish himself as a MAGA kingmaker with a top-rated podcast (Bannon’s War Room) and a steady stream of sold-out public appearances. As the Epstein scandal has heated up again, though, he’s also been on the receiving end of MAGA lashings from supporters who want to see the tapes go public. At a Turning Point USA event in July, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna stood at the podium and urged Bannon to release his own Epstein files. The crowd — not exactly known for its nuance — roared in approval.

Bannon did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

As for the tapes themselves, Wolff says he has no idea where the voluminous footage is now — and suggests that Bannon may have no ownership rights to them in any case. “Whatever exists is technically owned by Jeffrey Epstein or his estate,” he says. “I had a discussion with Jeffrey and Bannon separately about the cost, and it was expressly about media training. There’s no possible way that Epstein would have allowed it to be in documentary form. It was too raw and too revealing.”

Even if the tapes survived, Wolff says, Bannon may not have access to them. Along with the rest of the billionaires’ estate, he says,  they would likely  be in the possession of Epstein’s co-executors,  attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn. The lawyers, who are based in the U.S. Virgin Islands,  did not respond to multiple calls or emails.

“I’m very fond of Steve and I think he’s extraordinarily bright and insightful,” Wolff says of his erstwhile pal. “But without question he’s the biggest opportunist I have met in a lifetime of meeting opportunists. Bannon’s dream has been becoming the leader of the MAGA movement and he’s using this [Epstein controversy]. But he also understands that the files are never going to be released, because were they to be released, the person all over it would be Steve Bannon — in terms of the email traffic between the two of these guys. It was constant!”