Appointment of Trump wedding planner to HUD post draws outcry
Lynne Patton, vice president of the Eric Trump Foundation, delivers a speech on the third day of the Republican National Convention on July 20, 2016, at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.
The appointment of Lynne Patton, a wedding planner and longtime Trump family associate, to head the Housing and Urban Development’s office for New York and New Jersey is encountering strong opposition in New York.
Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from Queens, on Friday wrote a letter to President Donald Trump protesting the appointment and questioning Patton’s lack of experience for the job.
“This is not The Apprentice; The federal government is not your personal patronage system,” Meng wrote in the letter published on Facebook.
Patton has worked since January as senior adviser and director of public engagement for the Housing and Urban Development Department, where she served under HUD Secretary Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who himself was criticized for a lack experience in handling housing policy.
Previously, she worked on the Trump presidential campaign and as vice president of the Eric Trump Foundation, which is under investigation by the New York state attorney general for improperly handling funds that were earmarked for children with cancer. She was the planner for Eric Trump’s wedding in 2014 and handled other receptions and golf tournaments at Trump properties, according to her profile on Linkedin.
Patton was one of the most prominent of Trump’s African-American supporters and she released a YouTube video during the campaign defending his record on racial issues.
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