Donald Trump will speak at the Business Roundtable, an organization for chief executive officers of large U.S. corporations, as the presumptive Republican nominee moves to expand his outreach to business leaders despite his recent felony conviction.
The meeting is expected to take place on June 13 in Washington, D.C., according to a statement from the Trump campaign.
It is unclear who will attend the gathering, but the organization, one of the most influential business groups in the U.S., boasts a number of prominent CEOs as members, including BlackRock Inc.’s Larry Fink, Blackstone Group Inc.’s Stephen Schwarzman, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America and Harvey Schwartz of Carlyle Group Inc.
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients will also meet with the group that day, according to a person familiar, who noted that he was scheduled to join before the announcement that Trump would address the CEOs.
The Business Roundtable is led by Joshua Bolten, who served as former President George W. Bush’s chief of staff.
“As is our usual practice, earlier this spring, Business Roundtable invited both major political parties’ presumptive presidential nominees to address our members,” Business Roundtable spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement. “Former President Trump has accepted. President (Joe) Biden will be traveling overseas to the G7.”
The statement noted that Biden spoke to the group in 2022.
The event with some of the country’s most well-known business leaders follows Trump’s conviction last week by a Manhattan jury for falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to an adult film actress. Trump is the first former president convicted of a felony, an unprecedented situation, ahead of his reelection bid against Biden.
Still, many business leaders and Wall Street executives have been flocking to back Trump, who has vowed to cut taxes for the wealthy and slash regulations.
The meeting next week could also bolster Trump’s efforts to appeal to deep-pocketed donors to fund his campaign and help him close a sizable fundraising gap with Biden in what is shaping up to be a tightly fought election.
The former president raked in $141 million in the month of May, in part by ratcheting up his fundraisers with big-dollar donors, as well as using his legal woes to rally supporters. Of his total, $53 million was raised in the 24 hours following his conviction — mostly from small-dollar donors.
As Trump cements his hold on the Republican Party, some billionaires, such as Miriam Adelson and Schwarzman, have decided to back him after previously withholding their support.
While some CEO members of the Roundtable are Trump allies, the organization itself has been at adds with the former president at times, particularly over his tariffs on China.
The group also sharply criticized the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by Trump supporters, calling it the “result of unlawful efforts to overturn the legitimate results of a democratic election” and urging the then-president to “put an end to the chaos and to facilitate the peaceful transition of power.”
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