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Anyone who’s seen Alison Klayman’s 2019 documentary The Brink will remember the scenes where Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage sit together discussing a pan-European nationalist populist “Movement” – with Bannon calling Farage “the face” of Brexit while they talk about stitching together far-right parties across the EU. Bannon tells Farage that he’ll “fund it somehow”.
What those scenes didn’t show is that the Brussels vehicle Bannon was about to claim as his own – The Movement – had actually been created out of Farage’s network and that, in the background, Jeffrey Epstein was quietly helping Bannon plan, protect, and track his “European revolution”.
Farage is not just a cameo, he is ‘Mr Brexit’ – the most famous and successful of Bannon’s protégés apart from Donald Trump.
And Farage was wired into the legal shell of The Movement through his partner, Laure Ferrari, from day one – with an opaque dark money funding structure suggested by Epstein.
Farage’s Partner Builds the Brussels Shell
Before Bannon ever announced his European project, a Brussels foundation with the same name already existed – built by individuals in Farage’s world.
On 9 January 2017, according to the deed quoted by FOIA Research, a new foundation called Le Movement/The Movement was founded in Belgium with the aim to unite “populist and conservative movements in Europe”, defending “national sovereignty”, “effective national borders”, the “fight against radical Islam”, and “the defence of Israel as a sovereign state on its historic land”.
It was registered by the right-wing Belgian lawyer Mischaël Modrikamen, his wife Yasmine Dehaene-Modrikamen, and Laure Ferrari, a protégé and aide to the then UK MEP Nigel Farage, who was fresh from his success in leading the Leave.EU campaign during the 2016 EU Referendum.
Ferrari had worked for Farage’s UKIP, and then ran the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe – a Farage-linked think tank later accused (alongside the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe) of diverting EU funds into UKIP campaigning.
Today, Ferrari is openly Farage’s partner, so close to the Reform UK Leader that the house he said he had bought in his Clacton parliamentary constituency is actually owned by her.
Laure Ferrari (left) with Alex Phillips at the Leave.Eu Brexit Rally held at The Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in December 2018. Photo: Alamy
Modrikamen told FOIA Research that he had circulated a memo about The Movement to like-minded parties, but nothing much happened until Farage told him that his long-term friend and ally, Cambridge Analytica co-founder and Breitbart CEO, Steve Bannon, wanted to meet.
Modrikamen recalls that at this lunch, “it clicked”; that he and Bannon “absolutely shared the same convictions”, and that Bannon agreed to adopt the foundation as his Brussels hub.
Modrikamen told Reuters that the organisation would provide a pan-European “link between the Movement started by President DJ Trump in the USA and citizens and political movements in other countries, including the Brexit campaign”.
So by the time The Brink cameras caught Bannon and Farage talking about a European “Movement”, Farage’s own circle had already built the corporate shell, and Farage himself had brokered the deal that handed it to Bannon.
This is the structure into which Jeffrey Epstein walked.
‘Donors to My Revolution’: Bannon Turns to Epstein
On 8 October 2017, a few weeks after Steve Bannon had left the White House as President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, journalist Michael Wolff emailed Bannon asking: “How’s it looking…?” From Connecticut, Bannon replied:
“I’m in CT with donors to my revolution now all day… can we meet tomorrow?”
Wolff proposed a meeting with the disgraced sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein – “JE leaves for Paris tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Could meet before or tonight”.
Over the next year, as Byline Times has reported in these pages, those contacts deepened.
Epstein became a patron, fixer, and informal strategist; while Bannon pitched the Trump-‘MAGA’ machine as something that could shield Epstein politically if he backed the cause.
EXCLUSIVE
Emails and text messages reveal Jeffrey Epstein had a direct line into Donald Trump’s inner circle while Bannon worked to rehabilitate him in the hours before his arrest
Nafeez Ahmed
By June 2018, the released text messages show that Epstein offered Bannon accommodation on his island and Palm Beach house “anytime” he needed privacy, arranged dinners for him in Paris, and proposed to fly him on to Italy.
Epstein commented on Bannon’s TV appearances, sent him clippings about “Bannonism”, and joked with lines like “the power of Christ compels u”, while urging him to “continue tomorrow – focus on Miller ;)” – almost certainly a reference to Trump aide Stephen Miller and the immigration agenda.
In other words, as Farage’s partners built the Brussels foundation and Farage introduced Bannon to Modrikamen, Epstein was already acting as Bannon’s host, cheerleader, and fixer.
Rome with Salvini: “Ahhh, the Power of Dark”
The messages around 7-9 September 2018 reveal that Bannon was then in Rome, where he was courting Italy’s far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini.
According to contemporaneous reports, Bannon met Salvini at this time, with Salvini later pledging support for Bannon’s Brussels project, and Bannon saying that he wanted to help populists win enough seats to “blow up” the EU from within. Epstein’s texts mirrored that timeline.
On 7 September, he noted that Bannon was in “Rome thru Sunday”, praised his “great work”.
Bannon replied that he could “feel this turning now”.
Epstein joked: “Hopefully you are sitting on Salvini’s lap.”
Bannon replied: “Vice versa.”
Epstein responded “lol”, then adding a telling line: “But he is unaware… Ahhh the power of dark.”
The next night, Epstein raised the stakes: “If you guys want to come to Paris I’ll send plane.”
He asked when Bannon was heading back to the US. Bannon explained that his plans had changed repeatedly – “so many interesting things” – and that he was “in meetings in Rome right now”, before sketching out a likely return via New York.
On 8 September 2018, Epstein sent one of the key messages in the entire cache:
“As you move into more institutional international arrangements, the tension between 501 c4 opaque, and FARA transparency needs bright light focus. No stepping on your dick allowed.”
He was referring to 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organisations – the US non-profit status used by many ‘dark money’ political groups – and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). His advice? That these vehicles were “opaque” but sensitive; and that Bannon had to be “surgically pure” on registrations and disclosures.
A follow-up by Epstein suggested that Bannon should keep his own name clear by having “someone on your behalf request FARA opinions” from the US Justice Department.
The next day, Epstein referenced George Soros (by his birth name, György Schwartz) – saying that he
“[Soros] was careful not to register under FARA… NGOs were carefully structured. My reading is that you can form a media co and make that the umbrella exemption… The media co has lots of advantages. Source privilege etc.”.
In two texts, he sketched a structure:
- use 501(c)(4) and NGO entities as “opaque” funding and organising vehicles;
- front them with a media company that can claim journalistic status and “source privilege”, providing arguments against FARA registration and extra insulation.
The structure Bannon was trying to weld together is mapped neatly in the FOIA Research profile of The Movement: through Nigel Farage, he was connected to the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in the European Parliament (UKIP, AfD, Five Star, etc); through Matteo Salvini, he had a line into the rival Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group (Lega, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Austria’s FPÖ).
Raheem Kassam, Farage’s aide at the time and Bannon’s Breitbart London editor, told Reuters that The Movement would be a Brussels “clearing house” providing polling and analytics to these parties.
FOIA Research notes that Bannon’s US-based DHI network also links into Christian-right circles via the European Christian Political Movement.
In this configuration, Farage and his entourage were not bit parts. Laure Ferrari and the Modrikamens created the foundation. Farage brokered the London lunch that put it in Bannon’s hands. Farage’s EFDD base was one of the two main parliamentary blocs Bannon needed. Salvini was the other. Epstein was the background architect and fixer
Spreading Brexit Turmoil
Apart from financial advice and providing introductions, Jeffrey Epstein also acted as Steve Bannon’s real-time audience as he worked in other parts of Europe.
On 9 December 2018, as Belgium’s Coalition Government under Prime Minister Charles Michel collapsed over the UN Marrakesh migration pact, Bannon texted:
“The Belgium govt fell 5 hours after my speech – spent all day with the Flemish nationalist – and had the Walloon populists/nationalist meet them for first time in my hotel suite.”
In reality, Michel’s Government fell when the Flemish nationalist party N-VA walked out over the pact, but Bannon appeared to frame the crisis as confirmation of his power – claiming to have spent the day bringing Flemish nationalists and Walloon populists together in his Brussels suite.
Just after midnight on 10 December, he sent Epstein a one-line snapshot of the continent:
“Brexit; macron grovel tonight on national tv re ‘gilets jaunes’; Marrakech starts.”
For Bannon, Brexit turmoil in the UK, French President Emmanuel Macron’s grovelling televised address to the gilets jaunes protestors, and the Marrakesh migration row were all facets of a single populist wave he believed he could harness.
He then widened the claim:
“The right now has the working class behind them on immigration – macron collapsed tonight, merkle dead – we win 60% of euro parliament next spring – Salvini calls election the following week – done done and done… we can run the tables here.”
In his own head, Bannon was on the brink of a far-right landslide in the 2019 European elections, which would follow on from the tumultuous decision of the UK to leave the European Union.
Bringing Down the House with Farage and Johnson
This European operation intersected most sharply with British and American politics in November 2018.
Publicly, Bannon was on a short UK tour – captured in The Brink – speaking at NewsXchange in Edinburgh and at the Oxford Union, where protests delayed his speech and demonstrators pelted his supporters outside.
Privately, he told Jeffrey Epstein he had been pulled into attempts to unseat the then UK Prime Minister Theresa May:
“I’ve gotten pulled into the Brexit thing this morning with Nigel, Boris and Rees Mogg… the guys are trying to move on, may today/tomorrow.”
Reform UK denied that Farage attended any such joint summit.
But Bannon had his individual channels to then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, as well as Farage. Bannon’s Brexit plotting was part of the ‘revolution’ Epstein was backing. Epstein told Bannon to stay in the UK as long as possible. Bannon replied that the country was in a “hot mess”.
When protests in Oxford delayed his departure and Bannon complained that he could miss his flight, Epstein responded like a travel agent – proposing specific Gulf Air and EgyptAir connections via Bahrain and Cairo.
Bannon called him “an amazing assistant”. Epstein later sent a debrief praising Bannon’s performance at the Oxford Union, commenting on the “riot outside”, and even critiquing his bodyguard’s situational awareness.
Within days, Bannon was back in Washington for an eight-and-a-half-hour session with the US Senate Intelligence Committee in its investigation into Russian active measures campaigns and interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election.
Later texts show that Epstein quizzed Bannon about who came up: Americans such as Tom Barrack; Russians like David Geovanis; and, in Bannon’s account, only one named Russian ideologue, Alexander Dugin.
(According to Benjamin Teitelbaum in his book War for Eternity, Bannon had an eight-hour face-to-face meeting with Dugin in Rome the same month.)
Whatever was said behind those closed doors of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it is clear Epstein understood that his own legal exposure was entangled with Bannon’s – and that Bannon’s European revolution, including his work with Farage and Salvini, was unfolding under that cloud.
When Theresa May was eventually forced to resign in 2019 to be replaced by Boris Johnson, Farage was at a conference in Kazakhstan and celebrated her ouster with the Sputnik presenter and British left-wing politician George Galloway.
“Theresa May has resigned” announced George Galloway. “Let me give you a hug,” Steve Bannon replied. I pulled a camera out just as they let go of tight embrace but here is the far right and far left very much on the same page in Almaty. Natalia Antelva on Twitter/X
World4Brexit: Farage’s US Dark-Money Arm
Bannon’s plan to turn The Movement into a fully-staffed, Europe-wide populist hub never materialised.
The January 2019 summit did not happen, membership remained tiny, legal constraints and political resistance blocked expansion, Modrikamen’s own party folded – and by the end of 2019, the project was essentially moribund.
However, Farage did not give up exploiting his Brexit success.
In 2019, he launched World4Brexit (often styled ‘World for Brexit’) – a US-registered group aimed at “selling Brexit to the world” with American backers including former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and strategist Gerry Gunster, who had previously worked with Brexit-backing businessman Arron Banks, and Bannon as an informal advisor.
The Jackson Free Press in Mississippi described World4Brexit as a “US-based dark money group” linking Bryant, Farage, Banks, and Bannon via the Michigan non-profit – exactly the “opaque” structure Epstein had praised in his messages to Bannon.
Despite introductions to political players and financiers, the logistical support for Steve Bannon and the financial advice, there is no evidence in the public record to date that Jeffrey Epstein funded either The Movement or World4Brexit, though both looked like the kind of financial vehicle Epstein was recommending.
What the newly released Epstein files do show is this: the European revolution Bannon boasted about – the one Farage helped to architect and front – was supported and shaped in important ways by Jeffrey Epstein.
Farage’s politics did not sit outside this system. His Brexit was at its centre. Farage’s partner built the Brussels foundation; Farage brokered the partnership with Bannon; and Epstein advised on the money, the law, the logistics and the strategy that allowed that project to grow.
While the repercussions of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal continue to cause problems for President Trump in the US, neither Europe nor Britain is free from his pernicious legacy.