Trump CEO Was Charged With Choking Wife

Steve Bannon, the new CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was accused of grabbing his former wife by “the throat and arm” during an argument that resulted in a domestic-violence charge against him in the 1990s, according to court documents related to their divorce. The New York Post reports Bannon’s then-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, claimed he also threatened “to take the girls and leave,” referring to their infant twin daughters. Police reportedly responded to the argument on New Year’s Day in 1996, after which Bannon got a lawyer involved. In a declaration during their divorce proceedings, Piccard claimed her estranged husband told her “that if I wasn’t in town they couldn’t serve me and I wouldn’t have to go to court” to face the abuse charges. Bannon pleaded not guilty and the charges were later dropped due to witness unavailability. The divorce documents also include accusations that Bannon refused to wed the pregnant Piccard until he was certain the babies she was carrying were “normal.” “Bannon made it clear that he would not marry me just because I was pregnant. I was scheduled for an amniocentesis and was told by the respondent that if the babies were normal we would get married,” Piccard claimed in one document. They married in April 1995, three days before she gave birth. Bannon, the erstwhile head of right-wing website Breitbart News, declined to comment to the Post. The Guardian also reported that Bannon was registered to vote in Florida, a key presidential swing state, even though he does not live at the address. That could be a breach of electoral law.