The heiress quietly shaping Trump’s operation

Source: Politico | November 21, 2016 | Kenneth P. Vogel

Major GOP donor Rebekah Mercer has funded many of the groups and figures helping to assemble Trump’s team, and now she’s formally part of it.

Some of the biggest names on the right are jockeying for power in President-elect Donald Trump’s nascent operation, but one of the lowest-profile figures is arguably among those wielding the most clout — a press-shy hedge fund heiress who co-owns a boutique cookie bakery.

Rebekah Mercer, a 42-year-old who homeschools her young children, rarely visits Trump Tower and has a relatively narrow official portfolio in Trump’s transition effort. Her influence comes instead from her close relationships with the people and groups carrying out the day-to-day work of building Trump’s administration and political apparatus, some of whom have been the beneficiaries of millions of dollars of funding from her family.

Mercer’s influence in Trump’s transition effort — detailed here for the first time — calls into question Trump’s campaign trail boasts that his own fortune, which he used to partly fund his campaign, would make him independent from deep-pocketed donors and special interests he railed against on the campaign trail. And the entanglement of connections between Trump’s aides and Mercer’s big-money political operation has prompted complaints from campaign finance watchdog groups, and grumbling from Republican operatives who contend that Mercer has too much control over Trump’s GOP.

“It would be difficult to overstate Rebekah’s influence in Trump World right now,” said one GOP fundraiser who has worked with Mercer and people in the campaign. “She is a force of nature. She is aggressive and she makes her point known.”

Mercer has a coveted seat on the Trump transition team’s 16-member executive committee. Her work, which she does mostly from home, includes collaborating with conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society — to which she has steered a combined $4.7 million or more — to recruit appointees for positions at the under-secretary level and below, according to a transition team source.

But three people close to the Trump transition say Mercer also has lobbied forcefully against prospective cabinet secretaries she deems too liberal, while pushing for others she sees as true conservatives, including former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for Secretary of State. They say she was a leading advocate inside Trump’s inner circle for the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and the appointment of Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as National Security Adviser.

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