January 26, 2018

Republican Party Finance Chairman Accused of “Decades-Long Pattern of Sexual Misconduct”

Prensa Internacional via ZUMA

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Steve Wynn, the casino mogul who was a vice-chair of Donald Trump’s inauguration committee and is currently the finance chairman of the Republican Party, is apparently a sexual predator on par with Harvey Weinstein.¹ The Wall Street Journal has an extensive investigation, which opens with an account from a woman who came to Wynn’s office to give him a manicure:

After she gave Mr. Wynn a manicure, she said, he pressured her to take her clothes off and told her to lie on the massage table he kept in his office suite, according to people she gave the account to. The manicurist said she told Mr. Wynn she didn’t want to have sex and was married, but he persisted in his demands that she do so, and ultimately she did disrobe and they had sex, the people remember her saying….Mr. Wynn later paid the manicurist a $7.5 million settlement, according to people familiar with the matter.

….Beyond this incident, dozens of people The Wall Street Journal interviewed who have worked at Mr. Wynn’s casinos told of behavior that cumulatively would amount to a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Wynn….Some said that feeling was heightened at times by the presence in a confined office space of one or more of his German shepherds, trained to respond to commands in German.

The Journal contacted more than 150 people who work or had worked for Mr. Wynn; none reached out to the Journal on their own. Most of those who spoke to the Journal about Mr. Wynn said they worried that doing so could hurt their ability to work elsewhere because of his influence in the casino industry and the state.

If I had to guess, I’d say Las Vegas is full of men like Wynn. But unlike Hollywood, where actresses can expect some support if they tell stories of sexual assault, no one in Vegas wants to run afoul of powerful casino owners. Ditto for Wall Street and dozens of other industries. Hollywood may be low hanging fruit, but it’s about time that some of these other industries got a close look too.

¹Needless to say, Wynn denies everything.

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