Two vice chairs of the Washington University Board of Trustees who donated thousands of dollars to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley’s campaigns have remained silent this week as other top Missouri Republican donors condemned Hawley’s role in last Wednesday’s violent Washington, D.C. riots.

Courtesy of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Sen. Josh Hawley speaks with Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan during Senate testimony in 2019.

Vice chair Craig D. Schnuck donated $5,400, the federally-allowed maximum, to Hawley’s 2018 campaign, and $2,700 to the Hawley Victory Committee, a Hawley-aligned political action committee (PAC). Vice chair Stephen F. Brauer maxed out to Hawley’s 2018 campaign and his 2024 re-election campaign while giving $50,000 to the Hawley Win Fund, another PAC, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show. Neither Schnuck nor Brauer have commented publicly since last Wednesday, and neither responded to Student Life’s requests for comment.

Their silence stands in contrast to prominent Missouri conservatives like former Missouri Senator John Danforth and megadonor Sam Fox, who both supported Hawley early in his 2018 campaign but have since denounced the senator, arguing that he contributed to Wednesday’s violence. Hawley was the first senator to announce that he would object to the Jan. 6 certification of the electoral college vote, and he was photographed with his fist raised in the air toward the mob outside the U.S. Capitol before rioters stormed the building.

“Supporting Josh Hawley…was the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Danforth told the Associated Press last Thursday. “He has consciously appealed to the worst. He has attempted to drive us apart and he has undermined public belief in our democracy. And that’s great damage.” Danforth is the name behind the University’s John C. Danforth Center for Religion and Politics, and his brother, William Danforth, was Washington University’s 13th chancellor.

Fox, a major University donor and the namesake of the School of Design and Visual Arts, told the Kansas City Star that he regretted his support for Hawley and that he would not back the senator’s future endeavors. “Sen. Hawley engaged in an act of reckless pandering. He helped put the country on a path that has ended in five deaths and in disgrace for himself and for the nation,” Fox said. “Supporting Hawley when he ran for the Senate in 2018 was my mistake. He can certainly forget about any support from me again.”

Schnuck and Brauer are major benefactors of the University and longtime trustees, each with a University building to their name. Both men have given extensively to Republican political causes. According to FEC records, Schnuck and Brauer doled out roughly $320,000 and $1.2 million, respectively, in political gifts since 2015, the vast majority of which went to Republican politicians and PACs.

University representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Hawley has faced a wave of opprobrium for spreading false conspiracies about the 2020 election results. The editorial boards of Missouri’s two largest newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star, have both called for Hawley’s resignation, as has the Student Bar Association of the Washington University School of Law. The backlash has extended to the corporate arena as well. A slew of companies has halted donations to lawmakers that objected to the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win, or halted political gifts altogether.

Hawley’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Two other members of the Board of Trustees, David L. Steward and Penelope Pennington, have also contributed to Hawley’s campaigns, according to FEC records. Steward, the billionaire founder of World Wide Technology, gifted $35,000 to the Hawley Victory Committee in 2018 and Pennington, the managing partner at Edward Jones, gave the federal maximum directly to Hawley’s 2018 campaign.

Pennington could not be reached for comment, and Edward Jones declined an interview request. A spokesperson pointed to the firm’s recent freeze of political donations following the Jan. 6 riots.

Steward did not return a request for comment left at his World Wide Technology office.

In a statement, Student Union President sophomore Ranen Miao criticized the donors’ silence. “Josh Hawley challenged the sanctity of America’s electoral process and incited violence in our nation’s Capitol fueled by fascism, white supremacy, and hate,” he wrote. “I unequivocally condemn the rioting we witnessed at the Capitol last week, and would urge Mr. Schnuck, Mr. Brauer, Ms. Pennington and Mr. Steward to listen to their conscience and join the growing bipartisan condemnation of Senator Hawley, including from Senator Danforth, the Kansas City Star, and many members of the WashU community.”

Clarification: On the Federal Election Commission filing for the Hawley Win Fund, Brauer’s last name is misspelled as Bauer, but the address and employment information match other filings.