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Michelle’s friend at CGI Federal met with top officials at White House

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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Michelle Obama’s college friend whose company received the no-bid contract to build the failed Obamacare website met at the White House with the current acting commissioner of the IRS and with a special assistant to President Obama.

As reported exclusively in The Daily Caller, Toni Townes-Whitley, who worked alongside her classmate Michelle Obama in multiple Princeton University student groups, became senior vice president of CGI Federal in May 2010. CGI was the only eligible company considered for the contract to build the disastrous HealthCare.Gov Obamacare enrollment site. (Related: Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website)

Townes-Whitley maintained her relationship with the first couple after joining CGI, even enjoying “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House in 2010. (Related: CGI Federal executive spent ‘Christmas with the Obamas’)

Townes-Whitley also had four White House meetings in 2013, sitting down with top administration officials and a presidential assistant, according to White House visitor logs.

Townes-Whitley met on Jan. 18 with then-Office of Management and Budget controller Danny Werfel, who became acting IRS commissioner four months later after the IRS conservative targeting scandal broke.

Townes-Whitley also met with then-special assistant to the president Jonathan McBride on two occasions, on April 26 and again on June 1. The latter meeting, convened on a Saturday, lasted more than five hours.

The Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI’s bid for the Obamacare account. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. A senior vice president for the company testified last week before The House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but did not name those companies or explain why only CGI’s bid was considered.

Townes-Whitley, who went by her maiden name Toni McCall at the time, and her classmate Michelle Obama, née Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, and worked together in two different radical student groups on campus. (Related: Michelle Obama and CGI Federal executive belonged to student group at Princeton that hosted pro-terrorist speaker)

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