Top Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf could scare off future business because he is working for such controversial and unpopular clients as the Ground Zero mosque and 9/11 truthers.
Some 9/11 conspiracy theorists deny Muslim involvement in the World Trade Center destruction, and some even claim the hijacked jetliners were a CIA diversion, as the US government bombed the Twin Towers.
Last week, Andrew Moesel, an associate at Sheinkopf Communications, started representing the High-Rise Safety Initiative — formerly known as the NYC Coalition for Accountability Now, a group that is trying to get a referendum on the November ballot that would require an investigation into the collapse of 7 WTC on 9/11.
“We were engaged by an independent committee on a ballot measure of a political campaign that would require the Department of Buildings to analyze building collapses and issue public reports,” said Moesel.
But most people dismiss the 9/11 truthers as crackpots, some of whom may have ties to anti-Semitism because they view the terrorist attack as a Zionist plot to help Israel.
“Hank will do anything for a buck,” said a rival consultant. “He just doesn’t care.”
Sheinkopf also represents the Ground Zero mosque and its developer Sharif El-Gamal, who outraged 9/11 survivors and the families of victims with plans to build a huge mosque within a stone’s throw of Ground Zero.
Sheinkopf describes the scaled-down Park51 that ultimately opened on Park Place as “a community center and prayer space.”