From the first lady’s former communications director now the vice president of Siemens corporate affairs, to individual consulting deals for Obama campaign operatives like Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe, there is a new generation of “Obama millionaires.”

For instance, Scheiber notes, former UBS president Robert Wolf has opened shop with a new firm called 32 Advisors, which advises domestic and foreign business clients:

The firm opened its doors in February after signing up several prominent Obama alumni, including former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, who will provide “economic intelligence” as a “strategic partner,” and Kevin Varney, the former chief of staff of the government’s export-import bank (the very same agency clients will hit up for loans). Wolf hopes to keep the roster of companies he works with small and the interactions intimate. “We’re very exclusive,” he says. “The clients want to be serviced.” Goolsbee, for example, hosts a weekly conference call with roughly a dozen hedge funds and private-equity firms to opine on the topic of the day. He occasionally dines with one of the fund managers. [...]

Though Wolf promises that his firm won’t lobby—anyone who asks will be referred to Washington fixer (and strategic partner) Heather Podesta—the text of the website advertises a “broad network of relationships” to help clients“open and sustain the lines of communication with political, business and financial leaders.” None of this has gone unnoticed in Obamaworld. “There are those of us who e-mailed it to each other to laugh about it,” says a former White House official. “It’s stunning.”

Wolf raised more than half a million dollars for the president’s reelection campaign, and is a fairly frequent Obama golf partner. In 2009, Obama appointed Wolf to the Economic Recovery Advisory Board; he also served on the Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Scheiber also writes of a rift between a contingency of former advisers linked to SKDKnickerbocker managing director Anita Dunn, and advisers close to David Axelrod, Bob Gibbs, and Plouffe:

Members of the Axelrod-Gibbs-Plouffe axis chafe at the work Dunn’s firm, SKDKnickerbocker, has done for ex–Republican governor Charlie Crist andfor a coalition of junk-food manufacturers. “We’re very sensitive about not working for anyone that … might reflect poorly on the president,” says one former Obama adviser. “Other firms haven’t concerned themselves with that. Anita Dunn and SKDK worked on the sugar campaign in direct competition with the first lady’s anti-obesity campaign.”

In response, those close to Dunn cry double standard. Plouffe, after all, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars advising corporate clients like Boeing and G.E., and he once gave a speech in Azerbaijan underwritten by a group closely aligned with the country’s dictator. Gibbs served as a semi-official spokesman for the Obama campaign last year while commanding jaw-dropping speaking fees from corporations no doubt keen to influence the White House. (Gibbs says there’s a difference between handicapping the presidential race and “advising groups who oppose the president and first lady’s top priorities.”) Dunn’s defenders also note that she was successful for decades before advising Obama, unlike some of the newly minted “Obama millionaires.”

Plouffe’s Azerbijan-underwritten speech was not his only engagement with questionable backers; the adviser was paid to speak in 2010 by a South African company with ties to the Assad regime. He has also earned up to $20,000 investing in Standard Charter Bank, a British bank that broke sanctions to do business with Iranian clients.

The former advisers also have been much cosier with hedge funds in their private sector ventures.

Gibbs was paid to speak last year at the SALT Conference, an annual meeting of some of the world’s most powerful hedge fund managers, investors, and political figures. Axelrod spoke at the event the year before, as well.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, an email proposal circulated last year among hedge fund managers last year by a PR firm touted Dunn as a consultant to improve the industry’s image.

1. The White House Could Not Find a Woman to Include in Official Picture

Flickr

The White House released an official picture on its Flickr account in January that depicted the president with his top advisers in the Oval Office. The picture included eleven men, including Obama, and Valerie Jarrett’s leg.

2. Former Top Obama Aide Says White House Is a Hostile Environment for Women

Pete Rouse, Anita Dunn, Mona Sutphen 2009 / AP

One of the president’s fiercest defenders, former White House communications director Anita Dunn, said “this place would be in court for a hostile workplace. … Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

3. Women Are Underpaid by Obama

Obama signing Lilly Ledbetter Bill in 2009 / AP

Women working in Obama’s White House earn significantly less than men. On average, woman are paid about 18 percent less than their male colleagues.

4. The Obama Campaign Also Paid Female Staffers Less

AP

Obama For America paid its male employees an average of 5.3 percent more than its female employees.

5. Obama Does Not Like Including Women in His Foursomes

Ohio Gov. Kasich, House Speaker Boehner, Biden, Obama / AP

Obama loves to play golf, just not with women. Obama’s first 23 rounds of golf as president did not include a single female. It is unclear if the president enjoys watching LPGA events.

6. The President Judges Female Elected Officials by Their Looks

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Obama / AP

While praising California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Obama decided to focus the attractiveness of the state’s top cop. During a fundraiser, Obama said “she also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general.”

7. Obama Belittled Female Reporter

Obama campaigning in 2008 / AP

Obama referred to a female reporter as “sweetie” as he brushed off her question during the 2008 campaign.

The veteran corporate “consultant” and former White House communications director is one of the closest advisers to the president’s reelection campaign, the New York Times reported over the weekend.

[Dunn] and her colleagues at SKDKnickerbocker, a communications firm, have built a growing list of blue-chip companies — food manufacturers, a military contractor, the New York Stock Exchange and the Canadian company developing the Keystone XL pipeline — willing to pay handsomely for help in winning over federal regulators or landing government contracts. Some clients and lobbyists who have teamed up with SKDK say they benefit from the firm’s ability to provide information about the Obama administration’s views. …

Ms. Dunn’s dual roles show the limits of Mr. Obama’s attempts to change the culture of Washington. Even as he pledged to curb the influence of special interests in the capital and has restricted the role of lobbyists in his administration, the president and his top aides continue to rely on political operatives like Ms. Dunn who also represent clients seeking to influence public policy. …

Ms. Dunn regularly attends closed-door political strategy briefings with top Obama aides; White House records show she has visited more than 100 times since leaving her communications job. She is now serving as a paid adviser to the Democratic National Committee.

Because she is not formally registered as a lobbyist, Dunn is able to get around the nominal ethics restrictions imposed by Obama.

As a candidate in 2007, Obama said he was “in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.”

The nonpartisan fact-checking website, PolitiFact, rated this the president’s “biggest broken promise.”

The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney has thoroughly documented the extent to which lobbyists have been welcomed into key roles within the Obama administration.

Democratic aides are none too pleased with the Times’ revelations about Dunn, reports James Warren at the Daily Beast.

“It smells,” said one Obama campaign official. He asked for anonymity, as did at least three other White House and campaign aides, as well as one close personal friend of the president who responded to disclosures by The New York Times.

A White House aide conceded being “pissed off” by the story, expressing concern that Mitt Romney could use it to ridicule Obama’s pledges to change Washington’s political culture. He cited several other consultants working on the reelection campaign and said, “You don’t hear stories about them so obviously exploiting their access.”

A campaign aide said: “The timing is terrible. I bet it comes up in the debate [Monday] as a question of Obama ethics. I think she is well over the line.”

A former high-ranking Clinton administration official told Warren he “cannot imagine anyone with that kind of ongoing practice being allowed to be a regular participant in White House meetings under Clinton—or any other president.”

The situation was even more problematic, the aide said, because Dunn “is obviously profiteering massively and quickly from perceived access—firm doubling to 60 employees since she came back from the White House in 2009!”

Dunn is a self-professed fan of the communist mass murderer Mao Zedong.

Interestingly, Dunn did not appear to accompany the president to Florida for Monday night’s foreign policy debate, per a recent White House pool report.

ANITA DUNN: Chris, that is certainly the argument the Republicans have been making, and I think that they, you know, have done an effective job with that. But the reality is you’re going to have a choice between two…

REPORTER: Miss Dunn, I’m America’s Morning News. I wanted to ask you: What role did the White House play in having Sandra Fluke appear before Congress?

ANITA DUNN: Good morning, how are you?

REPORTER: I’m doing great, how are you?

DUNN: Good. You know, I’m not actually sure I [unclear] talk to America’s Morning News. You can call my office, if you’d like to get an interview, but right now I have to go into CNN.

REPORTER: How offended are you, as a woman, that Bill Maher referred to Sarah Palin as the c-word.

DUNN: You may call my office to schedule an interview, which is what legitimate news organizations generally do.

REPORTER: Did you urge the president to call the governor after Bill Maher called Gov. Palin the c-word?

DUNN: You can call my office for an interview, which what legitimate news organizations do. I understand your news organization doesn’t behave that way, but I will tell you right now that I think you should call my office and we’ll be happy to discuss whether or not we would like to schedule an interview with you. But this is not the way things get done with legitimate news organizations as opposed to partisan political operations—

REPORTER: I’m not a political operation, I’m just doing this for radio.

DUNN: Well, I have to be honest with you. You may call my office for interview, I’d be happy—I see you have a whole list of questions—

REPORTER: Yeah, just a bunch of questions.

DUNN: But I’m supposed to be at CNN right now, and I didn’t have anything scheduled with you—

REPORTER: Did you urge the president to call Laura Ingraham after MSNBC’s Ed Schultz called her a right-wing slut?

DUNN: Listen, you can call my office for an interview, but I’m not going to talk to you.

REPORTER: Thank you for your time, ma’am. Have a good day.

According to the Daily Caller:

O’Reilly went on to reveal that SKDKnickerbocker, a PR agency whose managing director is former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, is now representing Fluke. Dunn is perhaps best known for her attack on Fox News and for naming Chinese revolutionary and Communist leader Mao Tse Tung as one of her favorite political philosophers back in 2009.

On February 14, the Free Beacon reported that Dunn was being touted as a P.R. consultant for an initiative aimed at improving the public image of hedge funds in America. Dunn previously criticized hedge funds during her tenure in the Obama administration.

While McClean/Clark denied that the proposal had advanced into an actual campaign, when the Washington Free Beacon first approached SKDK for comment, an aide to Anita Dunn stated, “Look, I’m not giving any answer to any question to you whatsoever on this topic.” However, the same aide did subsequently email the Washington Free Beacon to say that “SKDK is not currently working with McLean Clark on any projects.”

Since the publication of our report, SKDK senior vice president Paul Thornell made a statement to Politico claiming that his firm had “made it clear last summer that we were not interested in being part of any proposal and we’ve not been part of any ongoing McLean/Clark work on this issue.” However, an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and dated Nov. 28, 2011, casts doubt on Thornell’s claim. The email, printed below, contained the proposal which still featured Anita Dunn as part of a team of PR professionals assembled by McClean/Clark offering group or individual meetings with hedge fund staffers in both Greenwich and New York City.

From: XXX
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 5:04 PM
To: XXX
Cc: XXX
Subject: Follow up to our summer dinner re: hedge funds’ public image

I hope everyone had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Last summer, several of us attended a dinner and presentation by the public affairs firm McLean/Clark. We discussed the public perception of the financial industry and legislative and regulatory risks to hedge funds in particular. The bi-partisan team led by McLean/Clark partners Joe McLean and James Berger, laid out the stark realities about the environment in which our industry now finds itself. That evening we began to explore how we could employ an integrated public affairs campaign to help mitigate and repair the damage as well as increase our upside potential through an improved image, [redacted].

Both the Democrats and Republicans on the McLean/Clark team are in 100% agreement this deterioration is sure to accelerate as the presidential campaign season fuels new rounds of finger pointing and misinformation. Therefore they believe that now is time to take steps to prevent politicians or business competitors from using our industry as a scapegoat, target us for their own political or business gain or promote ineffective regulations. McLean/Clark has prepared a strategic plan and drafted a proposal to develop and execute a state-based grassroots campaign to accomplish just that.

I have attached a copy of the executive summary of their detailed proposal. Please take a look, with a view toward meeting again with them and their team to discuss establishing a potential coalition (would be structured to provide anonymity to the extent desired). Please treat this document as confidential, and feel free to call me or XXX/XXX if you would like to discuss this and receive a copy of the full proposal. They intend to schedule small group or individual meetings (both in New York City and Greenwich).

The Washington Free Beacon has requested comment from Anita Dunn’s office in order to explain the chronological discrepancy. We will update this story as warranted.

After attacking hedge funds and their managers during her tenure in the Obama administration, former White House communications director Anita Dunn is being touted as a public relations consultant to improve the industry’s image, according to a secret proposal obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Dunn, currently a managing director at the Democratic consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker (SKDK), is being promoted by the public relations firm McLean/Clark LLC as a director of “paid media” for a pro-hedge-fund campaign. The project is described by promotional material as a “comprehensive public affairs operation” to “raise awareness about the positive role hedge funds play in the American economy” and to “eliminate the need for politicians to take aim at hedge funds.”

As White House communications director, Dunn helped President Obama criticize hedge funds as a key factor of the financial collapse—and she has continued that criticism, at least in public, ever since.

An industry outsider who was pitched on McLean/Clark’s proposal told the Washington Free Beacon that he was surprised to see the former Obama official involved in the effort. “First we see Dunn attack us on television,” he said, “and then she tells us to hire her to head off the exact attacks that she herself is hurling at us. The entire thing begins to stink like a protection racket.”

McLean/Clark’s promotional packet for their campaign, entitled “Hedge Funds and a New Vision for Public Affairs,” was sent to hedge-fund professionals. According to the packet, the campaign seeks to counteract the damage that the media and politicians have done to the hedge-fund industry in the public discourse.

McLean/Clark claims they will employ an unprecedented media strategy forcing state and federal politicians to “think twice” about attacking hedge funds, and will provide lawmakers “political cover” for defending the hedge-fund industry. Dunn’s headshot is prominently featured on the list of principals for McLean/Clark’s project.

McLean/Clark senior partner Joe McLean confirms that his firm has been “talking to some people” and that he’s had “some interest from hedge funds,” but claims that McLean/Clark has no contract currently in place to do promotional work for any hedge fund.

Dunn did not return calls for comment. Her assistant at SKDK, Tim Boyle, said, “Look, I’m not giving any answer to any question to you whatsoever on this topic.” SKDK then wrote a subsequent email to the Beacon that said, “SKDK is not currently working with McLean Clark on any projects.”

Recently, Politico reported on a new PR campaign called “Private Equity at Work,” launched by a private equity trade association, the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, and designed to “mitigate the damage and improve the industry’s image” in the face of attacks by President Obama’s re-election campaign and Democrats on the Hill. It is not clear whether Dunn or SKDK are involved in the effort.

Politicians are not Dunn’s only targets: The packet also bemoans the damage Occupy Wall Street has caused to the hedge fund industry. “Closer to home, both the leftist Occupy Wall Street activists and the right-wing Tea Party movement herald a new era of populist peril for anyone associated with finance. Given current U.S. volatility, various measures of a similarly reactionary nature might very well attract strong political support. … Hedge funds make inviting targets.”

Dunn has been a public supporter of Occupy Wall Street and its economic message. In a November 2011 MSNBC appearance, Dunn criticized public-relations efforts to undermine the Occupy movement, voiced her support for increased government regulation of Wall Street, and favorably referred to a New York Times story criticizing hedge fund managers John Paulson and Kenneth Griffin.

During Dunn’s 2009 tenure as White House communications director, the Obama administration introduced the Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act, which increased federal government regulations on hedge-fund advisers. On Apr. 30, 2009, the day Dunn assumed her role as interim communications director in the administration, Obama delivered a speech criticizing hedge funds for rejecting Chrysler’s debt-reduction plan and blaming them for Chrysler’s bankruptcy. Obama declared, “While many [Chrysler] stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none.”

Dunn remains a frequent visitor to the White House, where her husband Robert Bauer, Obama’s former personal attorney, served as White House Counsel until June 2011.

Dunn’s new consulting project comes just over a year after one of her Obama administration colleagues, former Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, also accepted a prominent position in an industry the president has targeted. In December 2010, Orszag took a job as vice chairman in global banking at Citigroup, a company that Obama once tried to dissolve. Current White House chief of staff Jack Lew previously worked for Citigroup, where the Alternative Investments unit he ran was ranked globally as a top “fund of hedge funds” and invested in a hedge fund managed by Paulson. Current acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Jeffrey Zients previously worked for Bain & Company, a business consulting firm tied to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, now a paid consultant on President Obama’s re-election campaign, is being paid to speak at an annual conference of hedge fund managers this May.

Dunn’s fellow managing director at SKDK, Hilary B. Rosen, sits on the board of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which along with sister organization the Center for American Progress (CAP), has been a relentless critic of the hedge fund industry. This, despite the fact that Thomas Steyer, who sits on CAP’s board, runs Farallon Capital Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the country. Rosen formerly worked for the communications consultancy partnership Brunswick Group LLC, which advises hedge funds. McLean/Clark’s proposal did not mention Rosen. However, the head of SKDK’s New York office, Josh Isay, is listed in the proposal alongside Dunn.

Updated February 14, 4:18 p.m.