‘The Tiny, Tight-Lipped Circle of Aides Guiding Biden 2024’ Has a Lot of Conflicts

Scandal-Plagued Aides Secretly Steering Biden’s Reelection Bid

A small group of senior White House aides, with a history of financial conflicts and ethical missteps, are secretly guiding President Joe Biden’s reelection bid from afar, according to the New York Times.

Anita Dunn

White House senior adviser Anita Dunn is a political fixer for Biden, often turning his fortunes around when they look bleak. However, Dunn has been involved in some controversial situations, including helping disgraced Democratic megadonor and Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein strategize against pending news reports covering allegations of sexual harassment against him. Dunn was also considered a “special government employee” during her first stint with the Biden administration, allowing her to evade disclosing her finances to the public. When she rejoined the administration, she was forced to disclose her vast wealth and divest between $16.8 million and $48.2 million of her fortune to avoid ethical conflicts of interest.

Steve Ricchetti

Presidential counselor Steve Ricchetti has been criticized by independent ethics watchdogs for his close relationship with his brother, lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti. Jeff Ricchetti has had remarkable success securing meetings between Biden and his lobbying clients, which have paid his firm over $6 million since Biden took office. One of his clients, General Motors, has met with Biden several times since April 2021. Jeff Ricchetti insists that he never mentions that his brother is Biden’s counselor as he works to secure meetings between his clients and the president. But ethics watchdogs say they have their doubts.

Jeff Zients

Former Biden administration COVID-19 czar Jeff Zients has a history of amassing wealth through questionable means. He got his start working as a consultant at Bain Consulting, which helped him amass an estimated net worth of nearly $150 million by the time he was 35. Afterward, Zients went on to launch Portfolio Logic, which invested his own fortune into health care companies that were ultimately forced to pay tens of millions of dollars in connection to allegations of Medicare and Medicaid billing fraud. Zients was later tasked with fixing the disastrous Obamacare website rollout in 2013, a task he dutifully fulfilled while holding his stake in Pediatric Services of America Healthcare.

Mike Donilon

Biden senior adviser Mike Donilon was the managing director of the Biden Institute, a University of Delaware project that found itself flush with foreign cash after launching in 2017. The Biden Institute and the University of Delaware have declined to disclose the project’s funding. Education Department data, however, indicate the institute has received millions from China, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Turkey. The Biden Institute also maintains 1,875 boxes of records that the president donated to the University of Delaware in 2012. The records remain closed to the public, but lawmakers have called on the FBI and Department of Justice to search the cache to determine if it holds any classified materials.

Jen O’Malley Dillon

White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon served as Biden’s campaign manager in 2020. Before that, she cofounded Precision Strategies, a consulting firm that raked in millions from liberal dark money groups. Precision Strategies also consulted for the American Investment Council, a lobbying group for private equity firms.

Bruce Reed

White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reid has been a fixture in Democratic politics since the 1990s. However, his consideration for the position of director of the Office of Management and Budget was withdrawn amid blowback over his prior advocacy for cutting Medicare and Social Security, raising the Social Security retirement age, and lowering the federal deficit.

Despite their checkered pasts, this small group of aides will have the final say on any major campaign decisions moving forward. It remains to be seen how their involvement will impact Biden’s reelection bid.