Steve Bannon’s long-running plan to establish a nationalist political academy in Italy has suffered another major setback after the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale, TAR) rejected an appeal brought by the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI), the organisation widely regarded as the former Trump strategist’s operational arm in the country.
The ruling, delivered in mid-June 2026, confirms that the Certosa di Trisulti monastery near Collepardo, in the province of Frosinone, central Italy — where the academy was intended to operate — will remain under State control and will not be made available to DHI for the establishment of the school.
The decision marks the latest chapter in a legal dispute that has stretched on for years and effectively prevented the project from becoming operational. DHI was also ordered to pay legal costs to the Ministry of Culture and the Lazio Region, put at €4,000 by local outlets including Anagnia.
DHI is now examining possible next steps, which could eventually bring the case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Speaking exclusively to Brussels Signal, DHI president Benjamin Harnwell said that “this case raises very serious concerns about due process and the rule of law,” suggesting that such considerations may have resonance with Italy’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The dispute unfolds against a backdrop of heightened transatlantic political tension, following recent criticism by US President Donald Trump of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which some observers interpreted as evidence of growing distance between the governing Italian right and the American conservative movement — a dynamic that Bannon has long argued exists beneath the surface of apparently close relations.
Despite its right-wing orientation, the Italian government has never supported the proposal for Bannon’s nationalist academy. Indeed, the Italian State itself has been a party to the legal proceedings aimed at preventing the project from moving forward.
The origins of the case date back almost a decade, when in early 2018 DHI obtained, through a lease from Italy’s Ministry of Culture, the use of the Certosa di Trisulti, a Carthusian monastery founded in 1204, in the Monti Ernici of central Italy. The stated aim was to transform it into an “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West,” as described by its organisers.
Plans included accommodation for around 50 rooms for 100 students and dormitory facilities for a further 200, intended to host students from around the world and train what supporters described as a transnational nationalist elite. The project never entered the operational phase, though.
In 2019, Italy’s Ministry of Culture annulled the lease agreement, followed in 2021 by an eviction order, in what Harnwell has consistently described as a flawed decision. The Council of State, Italy’s highest administrative court, upheld the annulment that year, finding that DHI had lacked the requirements set out in the tender at the time it applied.
Since then, a prolonged legal battle has unfolded between DHI — supported by Steve Bannon — and the Ministry of Culture over the future of the monastery.
The situation has remained unchanged despite the election of Giorgia Meloni in 2022 and a shift in ministerial leadership to figures on the political right and considered close to the prime minister. In the meantime, Harnwell has been fully acquitted by the Rome criminal court, in April 2024, of the bid-rigging and public-procurement charges that had formed part of the original basis for the annulment of the lease.
“The Italian civil service had deprived me of the lease of Trisulti on the basis of its own assertions that I made false statements in a public tender and that I defaulted on lease obligations — without any court specifically constituted to determine such things ever ruling in their favour. In fact, every court specifically constituted to adjudicate on my conduct has instead ruled unequivocally on my total innocence,” Harnwell said.
DHI had returned to court with a new legal action — its appeal to the TAR was notified in June 2025 — asking the Ministry of Culture to re-examine the case in light of Harnwell’s subsequent acquittal. The appeal was rejected, with the court holding that the previous ruling had become definitive and that the Ministry therefore had no obligation to reopen the matter in light of the acquittal.
DHI is for now not ruling out further legal action. Harnwell said the organisation’s legal team is currently reviewing the judgment “word by word, line by line.”
Should DHI ultimately fail to persuade the Italian authorities to reconsider the matter through domestic legal proceedings, the case could be brought before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The Court would be competent to hear the matter insofar as it is argued that domestic proceedings breached rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to a fair trial, protection of property and effective legal remedy. While it would not act as an appeal court to reassess the facts or overturn Italian rulings, it could find that the Convention was violated and, if so, order the State to provide redress, which may include compensation or other remedial measures.
For now, the monastery remains under State control, but the legal battle is ongoing and could expand onto the European stage.
The case is no longer just an administrative dispute over a lease: It has become a small but telling episode in broader transatlantic political frictions. The collapse of Bannon’s nationalist academy project in Italy — and the Meloni government’s refusal to lend it support — underscores a growing reality that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: The relationship between the Italian and American right is not only complex, but at times openly strained.
