WP EXCLUSIVE: Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

WP EXCLUSIVE
Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show

A WhatsApp chat started by some wealthy Americans after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reveals their focus on Mayor Eric Adams and their work to shape U.S. opinion of the Gaza war.

By Hannah Natanson and Emmanuel Felton
May 16, 2024 at 3:15 p.m. EDT

A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City's mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, according to communications obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the group.

Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call on April 26 with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia's campus, a log of chat messages shows. During the call, some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group's members could pressure Columbia's president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters, according to chat messages summarizing the conversation.

One member of the WhatsApp chat group told The Post he donated $2,100, the maximum legal limit, to Adams that month. Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows -- an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted. The New York Police Department is not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests, a spokeswoman for City Hall said.

The messages describing the call with Adams were among thousands logged in a WhatsApp chat among some of the nation's most prominent business leaders and financiers, including former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother to Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump's son-in-law. ... People with direct access to the chat log's contents supplied them to The Post. They shared the information on the condition of anonymity because the chat's contents were meant to stay private. Members of the group verified the chat's existence and their comments.

{snip}

By Hannah Natanson
Hannah Natanson is a Washington Post reporter covering national K-12 education. Twitter https://twitter.com/hannah_natanson

By Emmanuel Felton
Emmanuel Felton is the race and ethnicity reporter on the America desk at The Washington Post. Twitter https://twitter.com/emmanuelfelton

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/16/business-leaders-chat-group-eric-adams-columbia-protesters/

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Don't expect to see this in mainstream media, nosirree.

24-point Postoni (or whatever that is) doesn't count. At DU, if it's not what we want to believe, it isn't true.

https://typenetwork.com/articles/washington-post

[James48]

1. Of course they did.

You know the wealthy simply can’t have the little people over at Columbia picketing, or anything. That might draw attention.

[AnrothElf]

2. I disagree. I'd bet money it was an attempt to ENFLAME things with police action.

Not sure it worked.

[AnrothElf]

3. SURPRISE! There are right-wing Jewish people, too! And some of them are even wealthy!

Doesn't mean there's a Jewish conspiracy to control the world through wealth.

I'm disappointed in the WP. Is it really that surprising that some right-wing American Jews opposed the protests where schmucks were shrieking -- unhinged -- that "WE ARE ALL HAMAS"?

Trying to turn it into a wedge in the "left" is a patently transparent move.

The MSM likes to call them "the left", but I like to call them "non-voters".