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.

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.