American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten held a secret meeting with then White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon at a Washington, DC restaurant just months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to an article on the Intercept website published earlier this week.

Weingarten had not previously reported her rendezvous with Trump’s neo-fascist aide, which the Intercept said occurred in March 2017 and “had been instigated by a mutual friend.” The AFT president later told the Washington Post that the meeting was held on April 19 in an empty restaurant near the White House and had been set up by Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media Inc.

Ruddy’s conservative news outlet was an early supporter of Trump but had previously alienated right-wing circles by coming to the defense of the Clinton Foundation. Weingarten, a member of the Democratic National Committee, is a Clinton ally, and the AFT has been a longtime financial backer of the foundation, which functions as a corrupt nexus between US corporate and political interests around the world.

Weingarten told the Intercept and the Post that she agreed to the meeting to “advocate for public education” after Trump’s proposed educational budget cuts that could reduce federal educational funding by $9 billion and impose other cuts that would undermine special education and health programs.

“If you are the president of the union and you’re fighting fiercely to get budget restorations and to not have a dismantlement of public education or of higher education and the administration asks to—or it’s made clear to you that they want to…