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BlackRock manages more assets than any Wall Street investment management company, managing approximately $10 trillion. (Yes, that’s “trillion” with a “t.”)
BlackRock used a lot of the wealth it has accumulated to take control of large minority stakes in many publicly traded companies. This made BlackRock and Larry Fink one of America’s most powerful corporations. Wall Street is attentive to BlackRock’s and Fink’s speeches.
There is emerging evidence, however, that BlackRock’s influence is not limited to the corporate and financial spheres. BlackRock’s years-long efforts to build political alliances and make a variety of strategic hirings have allowed them to gain enormous political power within the Biden administration as well as the U.S. Federal Reserve. This has enabled them to form unprecedented strategic partnerships, and according to new research, to access White House officials.
We conducted an extensive analysis of BlackRock’s key executives and potential connections to Biden officials earlier in June. Our most important finding reveals that a top executive at BlackRock’s Investment Institute not only has deeply personal ties to White House staff, he has also frequently visited the White House, participating in closed-door meetings with staff from the Office of Cabinet Affairs and the National Security Council.
According to an investigation of White House visitors logs, Thomas E. Donilon — chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII), BlackRock’s personal think tank dedicated to assessing geopolitical investment risk — met with Biden administration officials at least eight times from March 2021 to November 2021, and perhaps on other occasions as well. White House logs show a “Thomas N. Donilon” visited with Biden administration officials at least twice, and a review of that name suggests it is likely the same person as Thomas E. Donilon.
Furthermore, White House logs often become available to the public many months after the meeting has taken place. This means that it’s possible Donilon could have met several times in recent months. However, we do not know of such meetings.
Although the contents of these meetings have largely remained a mystery, their secrecy, Donilon’s professional background, and his current role at BlackRock all raise important questions about the potentially corrupt nature of the gatherings.
Donilon is a prominent figure in U.S. international policy over many years. He was most recently President Barack Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and was reportedly on Biden’s short list of nominees to become the next CIA director.
In large part because of his extensive experience in government, and likely because of his connections to establishment Democrats, BlackRock hired Donilon to be its chairman of BII, which, according to BlackRock’s website, “leverages the firm’s expertise and generates proprietary research to provide insights on the global economy, markets, geopolitics and long-term asset allocation – all to help our clients and portfolio managers navigate financial markets.”
In other words, Donilon’s job is to help BlackRock clients make money and protect their assets by having access to important information about foreign affairs, geopolitics, etc. White House staff would have access to insider information that could greatly enhance such insight. We cannot yet prove Donilon is being fed this kind of insider information, but the identity of the participants in the meetings suggests that this sort of cronyist arrangement could be exactly what’s going on.
Donilon began meeting with Biden administration officials starting in March 2021. This was just two months following Biden’s entry to the White House. He was able to meet multiple times with Special Assistants at the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs Thomas Isen & Sanam Rasstegar. Donilon also had a one-off meeting with Sezaneh Seymour (Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, National Security Council).
Donilon also had at least four individual meetings with Kimberly Lang. We don’t know much about this figure. Lang is strangely absent from the official Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel dated July 1, 2021, despite having held meetings since Biden’s first week in office. However, federal payroll records suggest that Lang worked alongside Biden and Donilon in the Obama administration’s National Security Council.
White House visitor logs reveal that Lang is often seen with senior foreign policy and national security officials. This includes experts on geopolitical issues, terrorist attacks, economic sanctions, and nuclear threats. William Burns, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, James Stavridis who was formerly NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Colin Kahl, U.S. Undersecretary for Defense.
According to WikiLeaks emails, Donilon was in touch with Lang while Donilon was serving as national security adviser, and Lang ran the National Security Council, to which Lang is now linked. Lang was closely apprised of Donilon’s whereabouts, often directly communicating with him in addition to powerful government officials such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
These evidences suggest that Donilon is an expert on foreign policy and is meeting secretly with high-ranking national security personnel in the Biden White House. Donilon also works for BlackRock as a foreign policy analyst, which enables him to use geopolitical information to assist investors in getting a great financial return.
This finding is concerning on its own. This investigation reveals that Thomas Donilon has learned a lot from these meetings. Has he made use of this information for BlackRock clients? Are BlackRock’s foreign and domestic policies being influenced by Thomas Donilon through BlackRock? The mainstream media has yet to ask these important questions.
Incredibly, as bad as these connections seem to be, Donilon’s links to the Biden administration run even deeper. Mike Donilon, a senior advisor to the president, is Thomas Donilon’s brother. Mike has been a longtime supporter of Biden’s, even serving as his chief strategist throughout the 2020 presidential campaign.
Until earlier this year, Thomas Donilon’s wife, Cathy Russell, was the director of the Presidential Personnel Office, which vested her with the important task of hiring and vetting administration employees.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Donilon duo’s daughter, Sarah, also works in the Biden administration, as a staffer for the National Security Council, giving Thomas Donilon yet another important contact in the White House.
BlackRock is also connected to the Biden government. For example, Brian Deese, who is now Biden’s National Economic Council director, was formerly global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock. Wally Adeyemo is the deputy secretary to Treasury Department and was previously chief of staff for Larry Fink, BlackRock chairman.
Fink is also rumored to have secretly met at the White House. Visitor logs show that on February 8, 2022, just two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Fink met with Steve Ricchetti, the counselor to the president. Ricchetti served as chairman of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, and has been described as the “yin to the yang” of Biden’s other highly trusted advisor — Mike Donilon.
Why does the Biden administration meet with BlackRock executives so often? Do other BlackRock workers have had contact with BlackRock staffers? Have BlackRock’s financial interests impacted public policy? Has advance knowledge of the Biden administration’s policy decisions financially enriched BlackRock? Has classified intelligence on geopolitical events such as the war in Ukraine — and the Biden administration’s response towards Russia — allowed BlackRock to divest itself from riskier holdings?
Gaining answers to these questions is vital, as the evidence points in the direction of — but does not yet definitively show — a disturbing degree of cronyism between the White House and the world’s largest private asset manager. We are unlikely to get the whole story without an explanation from the parties involved or possibly an investigation by the appropriate authorities.
Justin Haskins ([email protected]) The Socialism Research Center at The Heartland Institute is his director. He’s also a New York Times bestseller author. Jack McPherrin ([email protected]) is Heartland’s research editor and a research fellow in Heartland’s Socialism Research Center.
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