Trump’s Inaugural Committee Paid $26 Million to Firm of First Lady’s Adviser
February 16, 2018 by admin
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One of the companies, WIS Media Partners of Marina del Rey, California, was created by a longtime friend of Mrs. Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, according to a person familiar with the firm. Records show that the firm was created in December 2016, but otherwise there is very little information available about it.
Ms. Winston Wolkoff made her name planning Manhattan society galas and has subsequently been brought on as a senior adviser to the first lady’s official government office.
Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump, said that the first lady “had no involvement” with the inaugural committee, “and had no knowledge of how funds were spent.”
Ms. Winston Wolkoff is not paid for her work in the first lady’s office, according to Ms. Grisham, who said Ms. Winston Wolkoff is classified as “a special government employee.”
Much of the money paid to Ms. Winston Wolkoff’s firm and other event production companies likely was passed through to other vendors who provided goods or services on a subcontractor basis.
Ms. Winston Wolkoff personally received $1.62 million for her work, according to one official from the inaugural committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the details publicly. The official said that Ms. Winston Wolkoff’s firm paid the team used by Mark Burnett, the creator of “The Apprentice,” whose involvement in the inaugural festivities was requested by Mr. Trump.
Also reaping payments for event production services was Hargrove, Inc., of Lanham, Md., a company that plans trade shows and other events, which was paid $25 million. David Monn of New York, who also is known for orchestrating society events and planned a state dinner for former President Barack Obama, was paid $3.7 million, and a company called Production Resource Group of New Windsor, N.Y., was paid $2.7 million, according to the tax return.
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Other expenses for which the committee paid directly included ticketing, on which it spent $4.1 million, and promotional gifts, on which it spent $560,000.
It also spent heavily on payroll and administrative expenses, including spending $9.4 million on travel, $4.6 million on salaries and benefits for its 208 employees, $500,000 on legal fees and $237,000 on fund-raising.
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The inaugural committee official said that wrap-up costs were more significant than had been anticipated, and indicated that the committee’s finances were affected by the fact that it never struck a large deal for broadcast rights to the inaugural balls.
The $107 million raised by the committee was about twice as much as Mr. Obama’s inaugural committee raised for the festivities around his 2009 swearing-in.
Mr. Barrack, a California investor, in a statement released by the committee with the tax return, praised the committee for carrying out the inauguration and more than 20 related events with “elegance and seamless excellence without incident or interruption, befitting the legacy and tradition that has preceded us.”
The inaugural committee closed out October with $2.8 million in the bank, according to the tax filing. It indicated in the release that the remaining funds also would be donated to charity once remaining expenses are paid.
The tax return indicated that the committee already donated to six nonprofit groups, and inaugural officials pointed out that the $5 million in total charitable donations to those groups was more than Mr. Obama’s committee donated.
Among the recipients of charitable donations, the White House Historical Association received $1 million, while the Vice President’s Residence Foundation, which is devoted to decorating and furnishing the Vice President’s residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in Washington, received $750,000. The Smithsonian Institution received $250,000.
The American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical group, received $1 million each. All three groups were involved in relief efforts after a string of hurricanes that ravaged the Gulf Coast, Florida and the Caribbean.
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As questions mounted last summer about the inaugural committee’s finances and pledged charitable donations, Mr. Barrack released a statement promising that “millions of dollars of reserve funds will be allocated to various charities, institutions, and foundations in an amount that surely will exceed any previous inauguration.”
The inaugural committee split the costs of staging a range of festivities with the taxpayer-funded Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and various federal, state and local government agencies. Security costs alone were predicted to be upward of $100 million, which will eventually be paid for by the federal government.
Among the top donors to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee were the Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, who donated $5 million, and corporations including Chevron, Boeing, and ATT.
The committee had previously filed a mandatory report with the Federal Election Commission listing its donors, and the donor names were redacted from the I.R.S. filing released Thursday. The bulk of the report — about 90 pages — was comprised of a list of donation amounts without the identities of the corresponding donors, including a page-and-a-half of in-kind donations, such as a musical performance valued at $729,000 and vehicle and equipment expenses valued at a total of $631,000.
It was not immediately clear who donated the musical performance or the other services.
The inaugural committee was criticized for staging an extravagant concert on the National Mall featuring performances by the country music star Toby Keith and the rock band Three Doors Down. The concert reportedly cost $25 million.
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The Photographer Behind This Unforgettable Sandy Hook Photo Looks to Florida and Asks, What’s Changed?
February 16, 2018 by admin
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Shannon Hicks was on deadline. The associate editor of The Newtown Bee was at her desk in the editorial department on Feb. 14, preparing stories for this week’s print edition. Hicks has a pair of computer monitors on her desk. On Wednesday afternoon, the screens became portals into the latest mass shooting to grip America.
Hicks was first alerted by a Facebook notification that took her to the group page of the Newtown Action Alliance, a grassroots organization that advocates for a reduction in gun violence and sprung up in the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That day, a gunman stormed the school and sprayed bullets—into walls covered in drawings, small bodies that sought safety and the bigger ones that shielded them. The alert on Wednesday pointed Hicks to a shooting in Florida, and included a live feed from WSVN-TV, which serves Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Five years and two months separate Sandy Hook—which left 20 students and six adults dead, not including the gunman or his mother—and Wednesday’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. By evening in Parkland, at least 17 people were dead. The suspect was identified by authorities as Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student. His weapon of choice, authorities said, was an AR-15.
“It literally hurts every time I hear about a mass shooting. My stomach tightens, and my breathing gets shallow,” Hicks says. After receiving a request for an interview, Hicks wrote that she would answer questions through email. On her own, she began jotting down notes while watching the news. “I can’t help but think back to the Friday morning that everything changed,” she says. “Everything that happened within the first few hours of that shooting starts replaying in my head.”
Hicks arrived at Sandy Hook just before 10 a.m. after hearing a mention of gunshots on a police scanner. Frantic parents searched for their children and Connecticut state troopers said the scene wasn’t secure as she began to photograph what was unfolding around her.
Ten minutes after her arrival, Hicks focused on a line of more than a dozen children being led away from the bloodshed by authorities. Her image captured not just the raw emotions of the students, but plainly illustrated how young and innocent the victims would be at a time when so little information was known. This wasn’t a repeat of the murders at Virginia Tech in 2007 or the killings at Columbine in 1999. It was mass murder at an elementary school, a depravity of its own kind.
She gave the memory card storing her images to a Bee reporter to run back to the office. Her editor waded through a first batch of pictures and picked out the now-iconic photograph. At the office a short while later, she went through the full set and selected other pictures that were released.
Hicks, who says she ignores the truthers and hoaxers that spam her inbox (“they are not worth my time”), says she sought professional counseling just prior to the third anniversary of the Sandy Hook killings. “I was always angry, snapping at people for nothing, keeping everything inside me,” she recalls. “There were a few things in my personal life that were bugging me, so it was time to talk to someone.”
On her drive to work each morning, Hicks passes a cemetery where at least one of the children is buried. There are also the homes of three families whose sons or daughters were killed; the park where satellite trucks gathered for news conferences; the firehouse where the families of the dead found out they weren’t coming home; the spot where she pulled over to let a police cruiser pass her as it responded to the shooting; even the driveway to the old elementary school, which was razed and later rebuilt.
“I still can’t stop thinking about that day, and much of that has to do with still living and working in this town,” she writes. “Sometimes I envy those in the media who go into a town or city to cover a story but then leave once their reporting is done. They aren’t surrounded by reminders like this.”
Now there’s a grim familiarity of seeing stunned children fleeing a school after bullets fly, with that scene replaying dozens of times across television networks in the hours after the gunfire. In Newtown, Hicks recalls, the gunfire had stopped and the suspect was dead by the time media helicopters arrived. Her photograph of children being guided from the school by officers, most with their hands on the shoulders of the peer in front of them, was the image that entered shared memory.
This week in Parkland, the perspective of a massacre shifted. One student tweeted images from his classroom of students trying to hide behind desks. Another student uploaded shaky footage to Snapchat that showed peers cowering on the ground, as well as a photo of apparent bullet holes in a laptop screen. As a killer wandered the halls, teenagers tapped into their social networks to alert the masses or say goodbye.
“They were comfortable enough to use the technology at their fingertips to let the world know what things looked and sounded like for them,” Hicks says, “even as they realized that this was not in fact another drill.”
At close to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Hicks wrote to say she had been watching the local broadcast from Miami for about three hours. “The scenes are so familiar, again and again: police and other first responders, the fire and ambulance crews, students leaving a building—many with their hands held up—and then the arrival of the media and ongoing reporting,” Hicks says.
She will often hear from family members and friends after a mass shooting: phone calls, texts, maybe a message through Facebook. At 7 a.m. on Thursday, Hicks says, her phone pinged. A former co-worker sent a text: “You OK?”