Bloomberg: Breitbart writer Milo makes money from gay “sugar daddies”

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“Alt-Right” leader, and Breitbart News writer, Milo Yiannopoulos, was profiled today by Joel Stein in Bloomberg News.

As background, the Alt-Right are white supremacists, many of whom have a reverence for vulgar Nazi imagery, who also have issues with women, gays, Muslims and Jews. And Breitbart is the Web site of Donald Trump’s campaign manager Stephen Bannon. Brannon bragged earlier this summer that Breitbart was “the platform for the alt-right.” So this story directly reflects on the Trump campaign.

The profile alleges that Yiannopoulos said that the last time he was in Los Angeles, he was picked up at a bar by a man who gave him $10,000 after a night of sex. Yiannopoulos says the man gave him another $10,000 following a second evening of fun. According to new stories, Yiannopoulos was in Los Angeles as recently as this past May 31 (possibly later).

This claim that Yiannopoulos receives money from “sugar daddies” comes immediately after the profile tells us that Breitbart only pays some of the $1 million cost of Yiannopoulos’ nearly 30 staff members. Beyond Breitbart, the staff salaries are also subsidized by donations from conservatives, and from Yiannopoulos own family money, according to the story.

Here’s Yiannopoulos’ admission to Bloomberg:

Alt-Right leader Milo Yiannopoulos. Photos by @Kmeron for LeWeb13 Conference @ Central Hall Westminster – London

Although some of his staff are paid by Breitbart, Yiannopoulos says he’s got almost 30 people on his payroll at a total cost of about $1 million a year, not including his salary. “My salary is really big, too,” he says. Some of this is paid for by donations from conservatives. Some comes from family money. Yiannopoulos says he and a business partner bought several apartments in his huge complex years ago when it was first built, slowly selling them off for a profit. He says he also hangs around a lot of rich people, some of whom were his sugar daddies. Last time he was in Los Angeles, he says, a white man at the Sunset Tower bar hit on him and gave him $10,000 after having sex with him twice and another $10,000 the following night.

And here is more from Bloomberg about Yiannopoulos and the Alt-Right:

“Milo is the person who propelled the alt-right movement into the mainstream,” says Heidi Beirich, who directs the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and describes the term “alt-right” as “a conscious rebranding by white nationalists that doesn’t automatically repel the mainstream.”

The Bloomberg profile brings several unanswered questions to mind:

1. The claim that Yiannopoulos was given $20,000 after two nights of sex sounds as if it could run afoul of prostitution laws. As Yiannopoulos is on staff at Breitbart, and Breitbart is run by Trump’s campaign CEO, this allegation directly reflects on Donald Trump. If the head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign employed an alleged prostitute, we’d never hear the end of it from either the media or the Republicans.

2. The article is unclear as to whether any of Yiannopoulos’ own money goes to fund his staff, and if so, whether any of those self-funded staff do Breitbart work. If you look again at the paragraph above, Bloomberg’s Stein doesn’t directly say that Yiannopoulos himself pays any of his staff salaries. Stein says some of the funding comes from “family money.” But it is unclear if that means money given to the staff directly by a member of Yiannopoulos’ family, or whether it means money given to Yiannopoulos by his family, and then Yiannopoulos himself pays the staff. The distinction is important due to the fungibility of money. Any money Yiannopoulos spends — whether it be staff salaries or political donations — would arguably be tainted by the alleged “sugar daddy” money. However, even if Yiannopoulos used any of his own money to pay for the staff, we’d still want to know if that staff worked on any Breitbart matters, or whether they only worked for Yiannopoulos on other matters. (There’s more on Yiannopoulos’ staff in this Buzzfeed piece.)

3. Did Yiannopoulos claim the alleged “sugar daddy” money on his taxes?

4. Is Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart, aware of Bloomberg’s claim that his staffer, Milo Yiannopoulos, earns money from “sugar daddies”? And can Bannon attest categorically that none of this alleged money made its way into Breitbart’s operations?

5. Is the Trump campaign aware of the allegation, and what is their response?

6. Are the California state, and Los Angeles city, authorities aware of these claims about Yiannopoulos?

I’d be remiss not to mention that this entire affair is bringing back memories of the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert episode of a good 11 years ago. You can read more about that here.

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