Former President Donald Trump will attend a private meeting with one of Washington’s most powerful corporate lobbying groups as he tries to forge an alliance with major business leaders.
Joshua Bolten, the CEO of the Business Roundtable, confirmed in an email to members on Wednesday that Trump will attend the group’s plenary meeting in Washington on June 13. Although President Joe Biden was invited, he cannot attend due to foreign travel for a G7. meeting. According to Bolten’s email, the business group instead asked White House chief of staff Jeff Zients to come. Zients accepted the invitation last week and plans to address the group on June 13, according to a person familiar with his plans.
The meeting is off the record and closed to the press, Bolten wrote in his message, which said Trump’s team confirmed to the group that the former president will be at the meeting. A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment. The Business Roundtable did not return requests for comment.
The invitation to members arrived nearly a week after Trump was convicted in New York of falsifying company records to conceal a hush money payment to a porn actress. Trump has continued to deny these allegations.
The meeting could attract all members of the Business Roundtable, which includes more than 200 CEOs. It could prove to be a pivotal moment for Trump, who has been trying to persuade business leaders to support and donate to his presidential campaign as he floats the idea of tax cuts and imposing sweeping tariffs if he beats Biden in November.
The group’s members include Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, who recently endorsed Trump after saying in 2022 that he wanted to support an alternative to the former president. Other members include JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Carlyle Group CEO Harvey Schwartz, AT&T CEO John Stankey and Chevron CEO Mike Wirth.
The Business Roundtable did not always support Trump’s policies during his presidency.
While the group applauded Trump’s tax cuts, the group took issue with the then-president’s policy of tariffs on Chinese products.
Several members resigned from White House business advisory councils in 2017 following the white nationalist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco and current chairman of the Business Roundtable, said at the time that “it’s incomprehensible that we’re having this conversation in 2017” and that his company has “racism, discrimination, neo-Nazism, white supremacy.”
Following the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the Business Roundtable condemned the attack and called on Trump to “end the chaos and facilitate the peaceful transition of power.”
Yet Trump has regularly tried to court wealthy business leaders, despite clear disagreements with some of them.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, spoke to a group of powerful Republican megadonors in Florida in January about why she thinks they should support Trump. The group is led by experienced investor Paul Singer.
Even after the conviction, Republican-leaning business leaders have shrugged off Trump’s beliefs and in some cases increased their support. The Trump operation announced it had raised more than $50 million in the 24 hours after last week’s conviction.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
