A Casino Magnate Who Is Head of the RNC’s Finance Committee Was Accused by Dozens of Women of Sexual Misconduct

Steve Wynn owns Wynn casinos, and he is the Republican National Committee’s finance chair. Partisans on the right chastising the left over Hillary Clinton keeping a known sexual abuser on her staff barely had time to get the words out of their mouths before their side was implicated in horrific abuse. Per the Wall Street Journal:

Not long after the billionaire casino mogul Steve Wynn opened his flagship Wynn Las Vegas in 2005, a manicurist who worked there arrived at the on-site salon visibly distressed following an appointment in Mr. Wynn’s office.

Sobbing, she told a colleague Mr. Wynn had forced her to have sex, and she repeated that to others later.

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.

Wynn paid the manicurist a $7.5 million settlement, and the WSJ reports that “dozens” of people they interviewed “told of behavior that cumulatively would amount to a decadeslong pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Wynn.” Wynn refused to speak to the Journal, instead issuing a written statement:

The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous. We find ourselves in a world where people can make allegations, regardless of the truth, and a person is left with the choice of weathering insulting publicity or engaging in multi-year lawsuits. It is deplorable for anyone to find themselves in this situation. The instigation of these accusations is the continued work of my ex-wife Elaine Wynn, with whom I am involved in a terrible and nasty lawsuit in which she is seeking a revised divorce settlement.

A rich, old, white man blaming his ex-wife for dozens of people’s allegations of sexual misconduct is pretty much the mascot for the Republican Party. The RNC demanded that the Democrats return all campaign donations from Harvey Weinstein the day that his sexual harassment broke out into public, yet as of this writing, they have not commented on their very own employee. Don’t ever hold your breath waiting for this sexist, racist political party to do the right thing. You’ll die first.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.