Preparations were also extensive for a May 2015 conference in Miami, where Labor staff agreed to send Perez, hoping to “build grassroots support” for the initiative, according to one e-mail.

Ahead of the event, AARP senior adviser John Cummings wrote to Perez’s office that the crowd could be as large as 1,000 people, and to ensure attendance it would advertise the speech “as well as offer refreshments to entice.”

AARP and Labor traded draft press releases as the meeting approached, with the trade group’s representative also offering to send talking points to the agency.

An AARP official also suggested Yahoo Finance might be a good place to get news coverage. “We typically have pitched the producer/writer and she pitches her editors and then does the soft piece,” wrote Josh Rosenblum of AARP media relations on April 29 to a Perez spokeswoman.

Preparing Questions

Rosenblum, in an interview, explained that his reference to “soft” pieces was about stories that help educate consumers, as opposed to hard-hitting, investigative journalism.

As they prepped for an on-stage discussion between Perez and the AARP president in Miami, the two sides exchanged a four-page document of possible questions and answers. “How specifically are people being harmed under the current regulatory environment?” read one. “Some may say that financial professionals are already well regulated. Are they really?” read another.

“We are open to any and all suggestions and any questions your team may want to use instead,’’ AARP’s Cummings wrote to Labor.

Perez’s staff was also told in a memo from AARP dated April 29 that during an audience question and answer period, an executive from the group “would handle and deflect any questions that are not germane to the topics or are deemed inappropriate.”

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