Steve Bannon claims he is setting up a new version of the Willard Hotel “war room”—the infamous locale from which he and other Trump allies attempted to oversee last-ditch efforts in January 2021 to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Bannon told CBS News’ Robert Costa that the “war room” is being “revived and reorganized” in the hours ahead of today’s election results, with he and other Trump backers gathering at the posh downtown DC hotel.

As with much of what Bannon does, his Election Day announcement mixes self-promotion that may include exaggeration of his importance with genuine menace.

Bannon has been courting media attention since he was released from federal prison last week, where he served four months for contempt of Congress. His new “war room,” on election night, differs from the 2021 gathering on January 5 and 6, where various Trump backers schemed to stop Joe Biden from taking office in part by lobbying GOP lawmakers. It’s not just earlier in the process: Bannon will be thousands of miles away from Trump and his top advisers, who are gathering at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. It is not clear that the assembly Bannon plans will be more than a watch party.

But it’s safe to assume he sees it as potentially significant. Since 2021, Bannon has used his “War Room” podcast to push the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and to encourage election deniers to run for local positions that will allow them play a role in the counting of votes in key swing states. That effort appears to have enjoyed substantial success in placing far-right election deniers in key jobs, and could prove vital to Trump’s expected efforts to challenge results in key battleground states.

In a news conference last week, Bannon urged Trump to falsely declare victory on election day, in a effort to convince Trump fans that a win by Vice President Kamala Harris could result only from cheating. “If the votes come in like it looks like they’re gonna come in, he should step up and inform American citizens of exactly what’s going on and not keep people in the dark like was done in 2020,” Bannon told reporters.

Such a declaration would aim to improve on Trump’s false claim of victory at 2am four years ago. In an audio recording I first uncovered in 2022, Bannon told a group of allies assembled on October 31, 2020, that Trump would assert success on election day, even if he lost.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory,” Bannon said. “Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith cited those statements in a motion last month that showed Bannon played a big role in what Smith alleges was a criminal conspiracy led by Trump to interfere with the certification of electoral votes in 2024. Bannon is not charged with a crime in that case.

Smith also revealed that Bannon appeared to have influenced Trump’s decision to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to assert power to block certification of Biden’s victory on January 6. The filing noted that Trump had a conversation with Bannon less than 15 minutes before he called Pence on Jan. 1—a call during which Trump berated Pence for his reluctance to follow a plan Pence later called unconstitutional.

It was on January 5 and 6, 2021, that Bannon, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, attorney John Eastman, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, and other Trump advisers gathered in a suite of rooms in the Willard to try to coordinate Trump’s efforts to retain power. (Women for America First, a nonprofit set by far right activists Amy and Kylie Kremer paid $70,000 to book the Willard Rooms used by Trump backers, using funds put up by Publix heir Julie Jenkins Fancelli, as I reported earlier this year.)

Smith alleged in his motion last month that the efforts at the Willard Room included calls by Giuliani—made at Trump’s behest—to exploit the mob attack on Congress on Jan. 6 while it was underway, using that mayhem to urge senators to delay the certification of electoral votes.

It remains to be seen if Bannon and other Trump allies get the chance to reconstitute such “war room” efforts on January 6, 2025. Bannon may be tied up then. Starting in December, he is set to face trial in New York for allegedly defrauding donors to a charity that claimed to be raising private funds to help build Trump’s promised wall along the Mexican border.

The story was produced in partnership with Important Context.

Last summer, Ava Chen appeared on the right-wing news outlet Real America’s Voice to rail against the RICO charges that had just been filed against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia. The indictment “reminds me a lot of China and the CCP,” Chen told host John Fredericks, a former Trump campaign aide who now anchors one of the fledgling TV network’s marquee shows.

Chen was identified during the August 2023 segment as a spokesperson for the New Federal State of China, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui—a dissident Chinese émigré who last month was convicted on RICO and fraud charges for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from his own followers. Prosecutors named the NFSC as part of Guo’s fraud scheme, arguing that the group’s ostensible opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was part of Guo’s scam.

In recent years, members of the NFSC have made frequent appearances across Real America’s Voice, as well as on Fredericks’ radio show. But what viewers didn’t know was that at the time of these interviews, a firm tied to the NFSC was paying tens of thousands of dollars to have Guo’s representatives appear on Fredericks’ radio and TV shows, as well as on another show that aired on RAV. The firm was also attempting to purchase airtime for the NFSC elsewhere on the network.

These payments for appearances on Fredericks’ shows are detailed in a draft contract, court records, and bank statements reviewed by Mother Jones and Important Context. They were also described by three sources. Bank records show the payments went to Common Sense Media, a company tied to Fredericks’ radio show, which is independently produced and selects its own guests. Records we reviewed and the same sources indicated that Guo’s supporters also discussed a contract that would have allowed his followers to secure airtime elsewhere on RAV, but those talks fell through. 

The transactions involving the Fredericks broadcasts were one piece of a well-financed effort by Guo backers to push messaging supporting Guo. As part of their broader outreach campaign, Guo followers also arranged extravagantly pro-Guo op-eds written under the bylines of prominent far-right figures, including New York Young Republican Club chief Gavin Wax and Karoline Leavitt, who has since become a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. Guo supporters reportedly paid $75,000 for two booths at the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, and they showered campaign contributions on members of Congress who expressed sympathy for Guo’s cause. In their outreach to the MAGA world, Guo followers argued that, just like Trump, Guo was the victim of a politicized prosecution.

“This is the fourth indictment [against Trump] in the short span of four and a half months,” Chen said during her August 21, 2023, interview on the Fredericks show on RAV. “And this speaks a lot to the rule of law and to the weaponization of the entire justice system, as we have observed in…Guo’s case.”

Such arguments have received support from Bannon on his War Room broadcast, which is among the most popular shows aired by RAV. A company that federal prosecutors have said Guo controlled made large monthly payments to the Bannon-controlled company that produces War Room. These payments totaled at least $270,000, according to a filing in federal bankruptcy proceedings initiated by Guo. Guo has also paid Bannon millions of dollars since 2017, court documents show. And Bannon has enthusiastically repeated claims made by Guo about Guo’s business ventures and political movement. 

But in arranging to appear on RAV shows, the Guo backers appear to have tapped more deeply than was previously known into the growing and unruly ecosystem of far-right broadcasts. RAV is owned by Colorado media mogul Robert Sigg, whose previous success came through WeatherNation, an alternative to the Weather Channel that reportedly made a point of not mentioning climate change. RAV, which began broadcasting in 2018 as America’s Voice News, started distributing War Room shortly after the show’s 2019 launch. Bannon has credited Sigg with helping the show after Bannon was kicked off YouTube in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. 

With War Room as its anchor, RAV also broadcasts shows hosted by other MAGA celebrities, including Charlie Kirk, Eric Greitens, and John Solomon—a lineup that has allowed the upstart outlet to position itself as a competitor to Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN. Fredericks, a conservative radio veteran, hosts Outside the Beltway on RAV. Grant Stinchfield, whose show regularly features Guo backers, also broadcasts on the network. RAV has said it reaches viewers through “DISH, Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Google Play,” and social media. Some of the shows RAV distributes, including Fredericks’ and Bannon’s broadcasts, are produced independently. Other RAV shows are produced in-house.

In interviews, four people familiar with booking practices for shows that have run on RAV said that they considered it unexceptional for guests to pay to appear on broadcasts, without any disclosure on the air that they have paid to appear. Usually these guests pay a booker or PR firm, which makes payments to the shows, the sources we spoke to said. The sources said they believed these types of arrangements are not limited to right-leaning media, though these people had limited experience with mainstream and left-leaning media.

“All channels do this,” said one person familiar with NFSC arrangements. “This happens all day long. You can call it ‘pay to play’ but this is not unusual.”

However common such arrangements may be, they are not transparent to RAV’s viewers. Neither Fredericks nor his NFSC guests made any reference in the segments we reviewed to the group paying to appear on this show.

The payments made by the New Federal State of China followers became public in part because of a bitter legal and public relations fight among former colleagues at a Georgia-based firm called L-Strategies. The firm acted as an intermediary, accepting payments from a Guo-linked company and, in turn, making payments for Guo followers to appear on Fredericks’ shows. A federal lawsuit filed by executives at L-Strategies against Angie Wong, a former partner there, alleges that Wong’s actions caused them “a loss of potential income [of] $120,000 per year” that they had hoped to earn brokering airtime for NFSC content on RAV. 

Jared Craig, a partner at L-Strategies who filed the complaint, said in an interview last year that he did not believe that paying broadcasters to interview clients as guests was unusual. Craig declined to detail the specifics of the payments, which he said were arranged by Wong, and he did not respond to more recent inquiries. Wong declined to comment.

According to that lawsuit, a Canada-based company called NewNoah signed a deal with L-Strategies in April 2023. NewNoah, which was acting on behalf of the New Federal State of China, was incorporated in November 2022 in Ontario at an address also used to register the NFSC’s website.

Under a draft media-buy agreement between NewNoah and L-Strategies that we obtained, L-Strategies agreed to pay $12,500-a-month “for media appearances to be sponsored by the John Fredericks Media Network.” The draft contract stated that the media package would include “at least one (1) television media hit and at least one (1) radio hit per week” to promote its client, Guo’s New Federal State of China. The draft contract also noted that “said media services shall be sponsored by the John Frederick’s Media Network” and that “host shall not mention Miles Guo at any time and for any purpose during media hits.” (Miles Guo is one of several names Guo uses.)

The draft contract, which was unsigned and undated, contains some confusing and seemingly inaccurate language. But bank statements posted online as part of L-Strategies’ dispute with Wong reveal that NewNoah began making monthly payments of $13,400 to L-Strategies in April 2023. L-Strategies in turn began making $12,500 monthly payments to Common Sense Media, a Virginia-based LLC tied to Fredericks’ show. Fredericks’ wife, Anita Fredericks, is the registered agent for Common Sense Media. The monthly bank statements, which run through May 2024, show regular $12,500 payments from L-Strategies to Common Sense Media up to that time. The bank statements indicate Common Sense Media had received at least $175,000 as of May as part of the arrangement. (In an interview, Stan Fitzgerald, an L-Strategies founding partner, confirmed that the bank statements were accurate but said he had not personally posted them.) 

On July 10, 2023, Fredericks’ radio show was guest-hosted by Nicole Tsai, a Guo supporter who had appeared on the program at least once a week up to that month as a representative of the NFSC. She appeared on his Real America’s Voice show nearly as frequently. When the New Federal State of China held a gala event last June celebrating the third anniversary of its founding, Fredericks was on hand hosting a panel. As of July 1, 2024, Fredericks had hosted a member of the NFSC on either his television or radio show nearly every week since April 3, 2023. 

The NFSC guests used these appearances to attribute all manner of US problems to CCP machinations.

In an August 2023 segment on Fredericks’ Outside the Beltway RAV show, discussing Donald Trump’s arraignment in Georgia, a Guo follower named Roy Guo (no apparent relation) suggested the charges against the former president were the result of infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party. In an appearance the following month on the same program, he claimed Chinese President Xi Jingping was facing stiff political pressure at home because he had “released the CCP virus at the end of 2019,” triggering the Covid pandemic. A month later, following the deadly October 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israel, Roy Guo asserted that the CCP was secretly aiding Hamas behind the scenes in order to bring other nations into the conflict in Gaza.

“CCP wants to get as many countries as possible involved in this, and also eventually they want to get [the] UK and US involved in this conflict so that they can divert the attention to, like, focus on the Middle East and deplete US resources and also to alleviate pressure for Russia in Ukraine,” he said. “And then, they will ultimately make [an] opportunity for themselves to attack Taiwan.”

Mark Serrano, a spokesperson for RAV, disputed the import of the deal between NewNoah and L-Strategies related to payments to Common Sense Media for appearances on Fredericks’ show. “Real America’s Voice is not a party to the contractual agreement you mention,” he wrote. “Any ancillary reference in the agreement to us is not our concern.”

Fredericks has previously faced scrutiny for selling access to his radio show. In 2020, the Justice Department forced a US institute funded by the Qatari government to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, resulting in the organization revealing it had paid Fredericks’ show $180,000 in 2018 for “access to key guests”; “regular show appearances by highly ranking Qatar officials”; broadcasts of “live shows every other month” and “regular discussions with US based and overseas Qatar officials for background and education.” Fredericks also broadcast live from Doha, Qatar’s capital, in March 2018.

Fredericks at the time claimed the payments were standard advertising. He told the Daily Beast: “They were paying me to promote their various events, which I did in my libraries when I was on the show.”

John and Anita Fredericks and the John Fredericks Show did not respond to requests for comment or to lists of specific questions. Ava Chen and Roy Guo declined to comment.

According to the L-Strategies’ lawsuit, NewNoah also paid for Guo fans to appear on another independently produced show that briefly aired on RAV, the David Brody Show. And the L-Strategies bank statements posted online show a payment of about $8,000 to the Brody show in April 2023. Brody declined to comment.

NewNoah and L-Strategies also attempted to negotiate a separate, $40,000-per-month contract under which L-Strategies would purchase airtime on RAV for a weekly one-hour “show” hosted by the NFSC, according to the complaint L-Strategies filed.

“Real America’s Voice package includes a one-hour program (approximately 48 minutes run time) on the Real America’s Voice network once per week, time to be determined,” the contract, attached to the complaint, reads. “The show will be self-produced by NewNoah, with final edit approvals by Real America’s Voice prior to airing.”  

According to the L-Strategies complaint and a source involved in the negotiations for the hour-long show, talks over that deal eventually broke down.

The L-Strategies complaint states that NewNoah did pay $40,000 to L-Strategies on April 28, 2023, and the bank statements posted online show L-Strategies received a $39,977.50 wire transfer, from an unidentified sender, on that date. In the “description” field, the statement says, “RAV 1 hour.” But the bank statements do not show any corresponding payment from L-Strategies to RAV. And Serrano, the RAV spokesperson, said that money was never paid to Real America’s Voice. Serrano did not respond to other questions about this proposed arrangement.

According to the RAV website, the outlet “demands the highest ethical standards from management and staff, and the company maintains a strict ethics policy.” The site notes that “staff members are prohibited from engaging in any conflicts of interest, including reporting on any enterprise in which the staff member has a financial stake.”