Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman defended Donald Trump’s response to this year’s US poll results during an emergency meeting of senior business leaders alarmed by the president’s claims that the election is being stolen, according to several participants.
About 30 chief executives — of companies as large as Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson and Walmart — agreed to the emergency Zoom meeting on the morning of November 6, only hours after Mr Trump said the night before that he had won several states that had voted for Mr Biden.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Yale management professor who organised the 7am call, declined to comment on Mr Schwarzman’s remarks, but three participants said the Blackstone founder took issue with suggestions made during the meeting that the US could be on the verge of a coup.
Mr Schwarzman, a Republican donor who has been one of Mr…