Happy Birthday, Steve Wynn!
Billionaire casino mogul and Trump “frenemy” Steve Wynn is no longer the Republican National Committee’s finance chair.
Wynn resigned on Saturday—on his 76th birthday—after a disturbing report by The Wall Street Journal the previous day described a pattern of sexually predatory behavior toward employees at his Las Vegas casinos that spanned decades. In addition to harassment, the Wynn Resorts CEO is accused of forcing employees at the casinos to have sex with him.
“He is a predator of the worst kind who used his position of power to sexually coerce his female employees. It is sadly no surprise that he keeps company with people like Donald Trump — a man who follows the same playbook of sexual abuse,” Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet, said in a statement on Friday.
Many Democrats are now calling on the Republican Party to return donations Wynn made, just like Republicans did during the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
According to The Washington Post, Wynn has donated more than $1.5 million to Republican committees and candidates in the past five years. In 2016, he gave $450,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His cash has benefited many Republican lawmakers including Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, Dean Heller, and others, and to a lesser extent, some Democratic candidates.
Wynn also is an ally of Trump, who in 2016 called him a “great friend.” An Instagram post by Trump a few years before that showed the two posing in a chummy embrace.
After Trump won the presidential election, he asked Wynn to serve as vice chairman of his inaugural committee. And just last week, Wynn was a guest speaker at the Trump Victory Fund’s gaudy fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, where guests were charged $100,000 per couple and $250,000 for a roundtable in which only half of the expected guests showed up.
“I took this job at the request of the President back at the time of the inauguration because I was amazed,” Wynn said at the fundraiser, referring to his job as RNC finance chair, according to CNN.
The two apparently have much in common, including a penchant for sexual predation. On Friday, after the Wall Street Journal story broke, Trump—or someone managing his Twitter account—“liked” a post about the story, prompting Twitter users to ponder why in the world the president would have favored such a damning story about his own ally, particularly when Trump himself is accused of sexually attacking at least 19 women. Someone in the Trump camp later “un–liked” the tweet.
Meanwhile, the board of directors at Wynn Resorts has formed a special committee to investigate the accusations, NBC News reported.