Democrats are selling private white house visits to billionaire donors so they can talk about policy in private
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/06/white-house-donors-biden-00166676four billionaires with a long history of writing checks to Democrats were escorted into the White House, past the candy-themed holiday decorations and down the steps to the ground-floor Map Room.
There, the group heard directly from President Joe Biden about his second-term agenda and were able to ask him questions about his campaign and policy, according to two people familiar with the meeting granted anonymity to discuss a private discussion.
One day later, an attendee at the meeting, Mark Pincus, a tech entrepreneur, donated the maximum allowed — $929,600 — to Biden’s joint fundraising committee, Biden Victory Fund. Within three weeks, another person in the meeting, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, sent $923,000. A third attendee, former Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, wrote a nearly half million dollar check two days before the meeting, according to campaign finance disclosure records.
The December gathering was one of roughly a dozen featuring a small group of longtime Democratic donors at the White House between last summer and March of this year, according to the White House visitor logs, which have been released through March. Many, if not all of them, included the president, according to the visitor logs and the people familiar with the meetings.
In many cases, attendees made a significant contribution to the Biden Victory Fund in the days or weeks afterward, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data and the visitor logs over this year and last year. All told, of the 50 largest contributions to the Biden Victory Fund through the end of March, just over half (27) of the donors or their spouses had a meeting with a small group of people at the White House. Many of them — and additional donors — also attended other meetings.
