Steve Bannon's Ex-Wife, Her Coke Dealer Boyfriend, And A Hot Tub Full Of Acid: The Usual.

Lookin' Good!

For most people, "no fixed address" might suggest homelessness. But for Steve Bannon, it means a fabulous life of Hollywood glamour, political influence, and probably tax avoidance. And then there's the abandoned rental house with that hot tub full of acid in it -- the dissolvey kind, not the psychedelic kind -- which maybe raises a few questions that we'll probably never have answers for.

The whole story is worth checking out, since you'll learn much about Bannon's restless lifestyle, from Hollywood -- where he made crappy rightwing documentaries and did financing deals that involved more mainstream fare -- to Washington DC, where he lived in the "Breitbart Embassy," a townhouse owned by Dead Breitbart's Home For Anxious White People. The whole time, Bannon was supposedly a resident in houses he rented in Florida, where he was registered to vote but never registered a car oer had a driver's license, and where neighbors frequently saw his former third wife, Diane Clohesy, but never saw Bannon. Even though they'd divorced in 2009, Clohesy co-signed one of the leases in 2013 as "applicant’s spouse." Bannon registered to vote in Florida in 2014, but always voted an absentee ballot sent to him elsewhere, leading to murmurings of voter fraud and, more likely, tax dodging, since Florida has no income tax while California has a 12% tax. The Washington Post notes that it hasn't been able to determine which state Bannon claimed was his primary residence.

So all that is fascinating and worth reading, but the truly WTF part of the story are some seriously weirdass details involving one of the rental homes Bannon apparently never lived in, on Opeechee Drive in Miami, in a tony neighborhood. The neighbors had complained to police several times about loud parties at the house, with people screeching their tires at odd hours of the night. During that time, neighbors often saw Clohesy at the house, as well as an unidentified man who was not Steve Bannon. As it turns out, whatever romance may have been going on in the rental didn't turn out so good:

She filed for a restraining order against Jose A. Cabana in 2012. He filed one against her in May 2013, court records show. She was granted a two-year injunction against him and his complaint was dropped after he failed to appear in court. Cabana was charged with cocaine distribution in November 2013 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He could not be reached for comment.

Later, Clohesy got caught up in an investigation of a guard at the Miami-Dade County Pre-trial Detention Center, where a friend of Clohesy's was being held in October 2013; she was seen by investigators when she handed over a contraband cell phone, $700, and several ounces of marijuana to the guard. After being confronted by cops,

She told investigators she had known the inmate for more than a year and “maintained a relationship with him through jail visits, correspondence and telephone conversations.”

So, drug-dealer boyfriend maybe. Or maybe a different friend in jail, because the public records are all there is to go on, and neither Cabana nor Clohesy is talking; her family is imploring the press to respect her privacy, of course. Then there's the weird shit the landlord found after the Opechee Drive house was vacated in 2015:

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 $14,000, according to an accounting by the landlords, who kept the $9,800 security deposit from Bannon and Clohesy.

Their real estate agent, Devin Kammerer, says he never saw Bannon either, but after the house was left with padlocks on interior doors and a hot tub destroyed by acid, he wouldn't work with Bannon or Clohesy any more, no thanks.

Which kind of leaves one wondering: What the hell was going on in that house and that hot tub? There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation, like a drug and human trafficking ring that occasionally had to dispose of bodies, or maybe simply a roommate Clohesy didn't want getting into locked rooms where she kept her valuables (which may have been drugs or vintage comics. One never knows). Maybe that was naturally occurring acid in the hot tub, because if any state could spontaneously generate acid in a tub of water, we'd put our money on Florida (or New Jersey). For all we know, the acid in the hot tub was simply a prop for a really conscientiously accurate Breaking Bad themed party.

Or maybe -- and we're just spitballing here -- Hillary Clinton secretly forged Bannon's name to all the documents to cover up her child sex trafficking ring in that DC pizza parlor. That's the only explanation that really connects to a possible bad guy in any of this.

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[ Washington Post / Esquire ]