The Guardian

Wall Street billionaire backed Republicans who later tried to overturn election result

The Wall Street billionaire who has been heralded for giving Oxford University its largest donation “since the Renaissance” gave campaign contributions during the election cycle to seven of the Republican lawmakers who later voted to overturn the 2020 election results and backed candidates late last year even as they disputed Joe Biden’s victory.

Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and chief executive of Blackstone Group, also financially supported a campaign group – Georgians for Kelly Loeffler – that is alleged to later have published a Facebook ad that darkened the skin of Loeffler’s Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock.

While Schwarzman has been praised for his philanthropy, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to Oxford, Yale University, MIT, and the New York Public Library, the financial support billionaires like Schwarzman, Richard Uihlein, and Jeffrey Yass gave to Trump and other rightwing Republicans is facing fresh scrutiny in light of the violent insurrection by Trump supporters on the US Capitol on 6 January.

In the months before November’s election of Joe Biden, Trump would or promise to respect

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