Three and a half years after he inherited Andrew Breitbart’s right-wing media fiefdom, Steve Bannon finally proved himself a worthy heir: he bet against Bloomberg Businessweek’s ability to read and won.

“Steve Bannon runs the new vast right-wing conspiracy,” ran the subhead to that week’s cover story, “and he wants to take down both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.”

Bannon, now months deep into his new role as chief executive of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, had, at the time, been nurturing an ostensibly nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), into a perverse mirror image of ProPublica.