Arcade Fire Frontman Win Butler Hired Ivanka Trump’s Ex-Flack Amid Sexual Misconduct Complaints

During the weekend, Fork published a lengthy article about Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler, alleging that his earnest and virtuous public persona was more complicated behind the scenes. The article cited three unnamed women who had consensual sexual interactions with Butler that they deemed inappropriate; Arcade Fire fans were between 18 and 23 years old, while Butler was in his thirties. A fourth person, who is non-binary, claimed Butler sexually assaulted them twice in 2015 when they were 21.

Butler responded with a lengthy statement, admitting that he had had “relations outside of [his] marriage,” including with the four people who spoke to Pitchfork, but he maintained they were all consensual. You can read the play in full here and draw your own conclusions. But at least one thing is undisputed: Butler hired New York flack Risa Heller to handle his PR crisis On behalf of Butler, Heller provided lengthy statements from him and his girlfriend/wife Régine Chassagne, and offered to put the website “into women who have had consensual sexual experiences with him in the past.

Heller is a well-known publicist in the tri-state area, who came work for Senator Chuck Schumer and former Governor of New York. David Paterson before starting his own consulting firm solidify. She became a regular star of New York politics and media, accepting clients like AirbnbMajor League Soccer New York FCthe Metropolitan Operaand Andrew Cuomo’s ex-girlfriend, Sandra Lee. BuzzFeed News Once describe her as “sharp, experienced, and one of the most knowledgeable gossips in town”.

Heller, a Hillary Clinton donor who would have kept a “Clinton pillow on a couch in his office,” made a habit of representing Democrats – even if they are sometimes controversial, like Anthony Weiner. Per BuzzFeed: “Heller has for years provided free advice to the scandal-prone former congressman, from his first tweeted dick pic and failed mayoralty to the most recent episode, which involved sending sexually explicit messages to a 15 year old girl.” But during the Trump years, she also took on two other outrageous clients in Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

According Politics, Heller represented Kushner Cos. for around 18 months, until they parted ways in late 2017 under controversial circumstances. Politics characterized the relationship as primarily concerned with “real estate” rather than politics, but that the two blended once Heller continued to serve as Kushner’s spokesman after the 2016 election. In late 2016, Politics reported, Ivanka Trump has hired Heller separately to help with the deployment of working womenhis 2017 self-help book on “self-actualization” that the New York Times described as “mindlessly drifted off,” and the New Yorker called “a painfully oblivious book for basically no one.” Heller also reportedly worked on Ivanka’s ethics disclosures, before moving on in July 2017.

One thing is certain: no one calls Risa Heller when everything is going well. Like she once said Crain’s New York“I can handle big problems… A lot of people aren’t born with the temperament to say, ‘You’ve got a big problem and here’s how we’re going to try to solve it.'”

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