Epstein files reveal Bannon sought funding for European far-right leaders

A fresh tranche of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein archive has laid bare the extent to which Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, attempted to enlist the convicted sex offender as a financial backer for Europe's ascendant far right. The messages, concentrated in 2018 and 2019, show Bannon shuttling between Rome, Milan, Paris and Berlin while pitching Epstein on a project to unite ultra-right and Eurosceptic forces into a single bloc in the European Parliament. The most direct evidence arrives in a text dated 5 March 2019, two months before the European elections, in which Bannon writes that he is "focused on raising money for Le Pen and Salvini so they can actually run full slates".

Bannon's European project after the White House

Bannon left the White House in August 2017 and almost immediately turned his attention to Europe. He founded a Brussels-based organisation called the Movement, intended as a umbrella for nationalist parties across the continent. By early 2018 he was meeting Matteo Salvini, then at the peak of his influence as interior minister and deputy prime minister in a coalition with the Five Star Movement. The Epstein files record a meeting in Milan in March 2018, days after the Italian general election that brought the League into government, and a second encounter in Italy that September when the League formally joined the Movement. Bannon's messages to Epstein from this period read like progress reports, boasting of his access to the new right-wing populists and framing their gains as an opportunity for mutual benefit.

Italy: Salvini, the League and the funding question

Salvini's name appears repeatedly in the Bannon-Epstein correspondence. There is no evidence of any direct communication between Salvini and Epstein, nor any indication that Salvini was aware of Epstein's criminal network. The League returned to government in 2022 as a junior partner in Giorgia Meloni's coalition, but the opposition has seized on the files to demand accountability. Andrea Casu of the centre-left Democratic Party tabled a parliamentary question on Tuesday asking the government, not only Salvini, for "clarity and transparency" on whether foreign funding channels exist linking Bannon, Epstein and the Italian right. Riccardo Magi, president of the pro-European party Più Europa, went further, claiming the files "implicate Matteo Salvini in alleged funding that Bannon had promised to provide for his election campaign" and warning of "potential external influence affecting the second-largest party in the current majority". The League dismissed the speculation as "unfounded" and "serious exaggerations", stating it has "never requested or received funding" and would defend itself "in every way possible in the event of insinuations or associations with disgusting figures".

France: Le Pen, Jack Lang and an offshore company

Marine Le Pen's National Rally features in the same March 2019 message as a funding target. The party has not commented on the specific allegation. More damaging for the French political class are the appearances of Jack Lang, a former Socialist culture minister who now heads the Institut du Monde Arabe, and his daughter Caroline, a film producer. Emails show Lang discussing meetings and holidays with Epstein. He acknowledged the acquaintance, saying it occurred "at a time when nothing suggested Jeffrey Epstein was at the heart of a network of criminality". Caroline Lang resigned this week from France's Union of Independent Producers after the emails revealed she had founded an offshore company with Epstein in 2016 to invest in young artists' work. There is no suggestion of illegality; she said she resigned from the company when Epstein's crimes were exposed. The left-wing party La France Insoumise has called for a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into the French connections.

Germany: AfD and the Merkel years

The files also contain exchanges between Bannon and Epstein promoting Alternative für Deutschland while denigrating Angela Merkel, then chancellor. The AfD entered the Bundestag for the first time in 2017 and by 2019 was the largest opposition party. Bannon saw the German right as a critical piece of his pan-European bloc. No evidence suggests Epstein transferred money to the AfD, but the messages confirm his interest in the party's trajectory. The AfD has not responded to requests for comment on the files.

Bruno Le Maire and the 2013 visit

Among the more striking French revelations is an email exchange between Epstein and Olivier Colom, a former diplomatic adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy, suggesting that Bruno Le Maire visited Epstein's New York house at an unspecified date. A person close to Le Maire, now the economy minister, told Politico that the visit occurred in September 2013, before Le Maire entered government. He did not know whose residence he was visiting, recognised Epstein, left quickly and never saw him again. The episode underscores how Epstein's social circle overlapped with senior French political figures long before his 2019 arrest.

The regulatory blind spot

EU rules on political funding remain largely national. The European Parliament's statute for European political parties and foundations, revised in 2018, tightened transparency requirements for EU-level entities but does not govern national parties' domestic financing. Italy, France and Germany each have different disclosure thresholds, enforcement mechanisms and sanctions. Bannon's Movement was registered as a Belgian non-profit, a vehicle that attracted scrutiny from the European Parliament's committee on constitutional affairs in 2019 but faced no sanction. The Epstein correspondence suggests Bannon understood this fragmentation and sought to exploit it by channelling a single large donation, had Epstein agreed, to multiple national campaigns simultaneously.

Andrea Casu's parliamentary question targets precisely this gap. By asking the Italian government to clarify links "not only with Bannon, but with those who today play a political game with these rightwing forces at the European level", he is pressing for a coordinated European response. The European Commission has so far treated political finance as a member-state competence, but the files may renew pressure for a directive harmonising foreign donation bans and real-time disclosure, an idea that stalled in the last legislative term.

What happens next

The Italian Chamber of Deputies will schedule Casu's question for answer, likely within the next two weeks. In France, La France Insoumise's request for a cross-party inquiry requires majority support in the National Assembly, which is uncertain given the current fragmented composition. The European Parliament's committee on constitutional affairs (AFCO) has not announced a hearing but may revisit the 2019 report on the Movement. The most concrete deadline is the next European Parliament election in 2029; unless member states agree on tighter foreign-funding rules before then, the regulatory gap Bannon sought to exploit will remain open.