The Clinton Foundation will not return contributions it received from a major donor who is accused in a $30 million lawsuit of coercing his employee into sex, citing the non-profit organization’s work in “empowering girls and women.”
According to a lawsuit filed in January, Jess Ravich, managing director for TCW Group Inc., repeatedly coerced a female employee into sex over the span of ten months.
On top of his prominent role in the finance community, Ravich was also a major donor to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Ravich is listed on the Clinton Foundation website as a donor in the $50,001 to $100,000 contribution range. He also gave $2,700 in individual donations to Hillary for America in both 2015 and 2016 and contributed an additional $2,700 to the Hillary Victory Fund in 2016.
Ravich also contributed the maximum $2,700 to Jeb Bush’s campaign in 2015 and Ted Cruz’s campaign in 2016.
The lawsuit accuses Ravich of inviting his female employee, Sara Tirschwell, to private “breakfast meetings” in his apartment during which he repeatedly donned a “white terry bathrobe” and made unwanted sexual advances.
“He repeatedly coerced [Tirschwell] into sex, implicitly threatening that if she rejected his advances, TCW would deprive her of resources and investor access that were essential to her successfully building out the Distressed Fund,” the suit claims.
Tirschwell complained to HR after nearly a year of the “breakfast meetings,” but she says that instead of investigating the claim, TCW unjustly fired her nine days later. Four days after Tirschwell’s firing, TCW appointed Ravich to its Board of Directors, despite the fact that they still had not investigated his alleged misconduct, she claims.
TCW and Ravich have denied the allegations and accuse Tirschwell of fabricating the sexual harassment story as a last ditch effort to save her career.
When asked if they would return the donations from Ravich, the Clinton Foundation told The Daily Caller that, “Donations, these included, have been spent helping people by fighting childhood obesity and HIV/AIDS, combating climate change and empowering girls and women.”
The Clinton Foundation refused to answer when asked if they condemn the alleged actions of TCW and Jess Ravich, despite Clinton’s insistence in 2015 that “every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed and supported.”
Ravich, of course, isn’t the only alleged sexual harasser with ties to the Clinton family.
In January, Clinton was accused of shielding her faith adviser, Burns Strider, from sexual harassment allegations. Campaign aides urged Clinton to fire Strider after a young woman on the campaign accused him of sending her suggestive emails, but Clinton opted to keep him on staff and reassign the young woman. (RELATED: Report: Hillary Clinton Shielded An Accused Sexual Harasser On Her Campaign)
Clinton also accepted significant amounts of cash and influence from Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was later accused of sexually harassing and assaulting nearly one hundred women. The New York Times reported in December that Clinton’s campaign was repeatedly warned of Weinstein’s transgressions in both the 2008 and 2016 campaigns. (RELATED: NYT: Bill And Hillary Were Weinstein’s ‘Celebrity Shields’)
Clinton said that she would donate the money she received from Weinstein to charity, but did not specify how much that amount is or to which charity she would donate.
A spokesperson for TCW told The Daily Caller that employees must obtain pre-approval before making political donations, such as the ones Ravich made to Clinton’s campaign. However, the spokesperson said contributions to the Clinton Foundation would be considered charitable donations and would not require pre-approval. (RELATED: Here’s A (Dirty) Laundry List Of The Clinton Foundation’s Most Questionable Foreign Donations)
