Corey Lewandowski
NEW YORK – The appointment Thursday of Steven Mnuchin – a Wall Street veteran who worked for 17 years with Goldman Sachs – as national finance chairman of the Trump campaign has reignited internal discord over campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Sources inside the campaign told WND on background that Mnuchin’s candidacy for the position was micromanaged by Lewandowski to keep Paul Manafort and other senior Trump campaign officials in the dark until Trump approved the hire.
“Lewandowski is Trump’s ‘Berlin Wall,’” an adviser close to the Trump campaign told WND, referring to the moniker associated with John Erlichman and H. R. Haldeman, the German-heritage top staffers who isolated President Richard Nixon to his detriment during the Watergate scandal.
WND received no response to a request for comment about this story from Lewandowski and Manafort, as well as Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks.
The concern expressed to WND by Trump insiders is that Mnuchin’s Wall Street-insider résumé could undermine attacks Trump might make that Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accepted millions of dollars from Wall Street firms for speeches. Hillary Clinton continues to resist calls to make public the transcripts of speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs.
Mnuchin’s appointment, along with a statement from the Trump campaign Thursday, indicated the real estate billionaire will raise money for the general election campaign after largely self-funding his primary effort. Trump is widely regarded as the presumptive Republican nominee after his two remaining rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich, dropped out Tuesday in response to Trump’s resounding victory in the Indiana primary.
The campaign said Trump will “be putting up substantial money (of his own) toward the general election.”
The news release quoted Trump calling Mnuchin “a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background.”
“He brings unprecedented experience and expertise to a fundraising operation that will benefit the Republican Party and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton,” Trump said.
Mnuchin is chairman and CEO of Dune Capital Management LP, a private investment firm. He is also chairman of Dune Entertainment Partners LLC. From 2009 to 2015, he was founder, chairman and CEO of OneWest Bank Group LLC, a bank holding company he owned with a consortium of private investors.
Mnuchin, who has a B.A. from Yale University, previously worked with Trump “in a business capacity,” the campaign said, “and brings his expertise in finance to what will be an extremely successful fundraising operation for the Republican Party.”
Mnuchin stated in the news release: “It’s a great privilege to be working with Mr. Trump to create a world class finance organization to support the campaign in the General Election.”
Lewandowski vs. Manafort
On March 28, Trump hired veteran GOP strategist Manafort to lead his delegate-gathering efforts during the primaries. Manafort was asked to replicate a role he first played in 1976, when he helped manage the GOP convention floor fight for President Gerald Ford against challenger Ronald Reagan.
New York Magazine reported April 19 that Manafort “has displaced” Lewandowski and “is now firmly in charge of all major aspects of Trump’s campaign.”
But by the end of April, news reports began circulating claiming Trump had rejected Manafort’s push “to be more presidential” and was still deferring to Lewandowski’s advice “to let Trump be Trump,” signaling an apparent power struggle between Manafort and Lewandowski.
Lewandowski was at the center of controversy in March when then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields pressed misdemeanor battery charges alleging he grabbed her arm during a Trump press conference in Jupiter, Florida, on March 8. Last month, Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg decided not to prosecute Lewandowski, explaining he didn’t have enough to bring the case.
On April 17, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Lewandowski accused Republican Party of Florida Chairman Blaise Ingoglia of being opposed to Trump’s candidacy, prompting an angry phone call from Ingoglia to the campaign. Trump responded with an apology while Politico cited an unnamed source within the Trump campaign characterizing Lewandowski as “a complete amateur.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/trumps-new-finance-chair-reignites-internal-power-struggle/
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