Immediately after the January 6 insurrection last year, billionaire Donald Trump adviser Stephen Schwarzman tried to distance himself from the mayhem, declaring that the violence was “appalling and an affront to the democratic values we hold dear as Americans.”
Yet Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone, is now wholeheartedly bankrolling the lawmakers who boosted that insurrection — and the resources come from teachers, firefighters, and other government workers whose pension systems enrich the billionaire.