REVOLVE DOOR 2

4/18 age of trump; 12 25 added corps that hire eg sinema exxon fb

capt 719

no merri

see main for older

rev door a proxy? related to sci supp 3

key to regulatory capture?

see staff

see lobbying

see swamp and inside the wire, where are trumpitas post?

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tool:

https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/

Overview

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Big Oil Takeover 'Now Complete,' Watchdog Warns as ...}:

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org › News › big-oil](https://www.commondreams.org/news/big-oil-takeover-now-complete-watchdog-warns-as-exxon-lawyer-joins-trump-doj)

1 day ago — Robert Levy, who worked at Exxon for 17 years, announced in a recent LinkedIn post that he is departing the company, whose profits surged ...Read more

big Oil Takeover ‘Now Complete,’ Watchdog Warns as Exxon Lawyer Joins Trump DOJ

“The Justice Department that should be fighting to protect clean air and water and avert catastrophic climate change will now work on behalf of polluters to advance the poisoning of people and the planet.”

Jake Johnson

Jul 07, 2026

IFrame Content

The executive counsel at the fossil fuel behemoth ExxonMobil is leaving his role to join the Trump Justice Department’s newly renamed Energy and Natural Resources Division, a move one watchdog organization said shows that “Big Oil’s capture of the US government is now complete.”

Robert Levy, who worked at Exxon for 17 years, announced in a recent LinkedIn post that he is departing the company, whose profits surged amid the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran. Levy will reportedly serve as senior counsel at the DOJ’s Energy and Natural Resources Division, which the Trump Justice Department renamed last month from the Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday that “the new so-called Energy and Natural Resources Division at the Justice Department explicitly aims to abuse emergency powers to drive oil and gas production, override state environmental enforcement, and generally serve at the beck and call of Big Oil.”

“Nothing could make that more clear than the naming of Robert Levy, ExxonMobil’s former executive counsel, a position that had him leading the company’s legal strategy on advocacy and civil justice, to run the division,” said Weissman. “The Justice Department that should be fighting to protect clean air and water and avert catastrophic climate change will now work on behalf of polluters to advance the poisoning of people and the planet.”

US President Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on delivering massive, climate-destroying wins for the oil and gas industry, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support the president’s White House bid and the campaigns of his Republican allies.

Fossil fuel giants have received a significant return on their investment. As Owen Bacskai of the Brennan Center for Justice noted, Trump’s “signature legislative package—which one executive deemed ‘positive for us across all of our top priorities’—gives oil and gas firms $18 billion in tax incentives while rolling back incentives for clean energy alternatives.”

Trump has also “placed fossil fuel allies in charge of the agencies that oversee the industry and fast-tracked drilling projects on public lands,” Bacskai wrote. “In just his first 100 days back in office, Trump took at least 145 actions to undo environmental rules—more than he reversed during his entire first term as president. Before Trump even reentered the White House, the industry was reportedly pre-drafting executive orders for him to issue.”

Perhaps the biggest gift to Big Oil was the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision earlier this year to repeal the “endangerment finding” underpinning climate regulations.

Critics expect more of the same industry-friendly actions from the Trump DOJ’s Energy and Natural Resources Division, which last week touted its role in defending “Trump’s executive orders on unleashing American energy, reinvigorating the clean coal industry, and declaring an energy emergency.”

Last year, Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project released an analysis showing that the Trump administration has installed dozens of former fossil fuel industry employees, executives, and lawyers across the federal government, positioning Big Oil allies to advance “the massive expansion of polluting energy, the destruction of public lands, and the sabotage and suppression of renewable energy.”

“This is nothing short of a Texas oil industry takeover of the US government at the expense of consumers, the climate, public health, and public lands and waters,” Alan Zibel, a research director at Public Citizen, said at the time of the report’s release. “To execute his extreme, reckless, backward-looking fossil fuel agenda, Trump has stocked his administration with fossil fuel staffers and ideologues.”

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Artificial Intelligence Aug 31, 2026 lever

He Champions Centrist Dems On Cable. He Also Works For Big AI.

Former Rep. Max Rose helps lead an influential network intervening in Democratic primaries — while quietly advising a tech-funded political operation targeting AI regulation.

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SZABO METHANE

...Lee Zeldin is a Chair of America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a policy group backed by Christian Nationalist oil baron Tim Dunn, a major Trump donor who has publicly stated he wants to end the classification of CO2 as a pollutant.

But Doug Burgum, who served as governor of the fracking powerhouse state of North Dakota and has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry, stands to be the major player directing Trump’s energy policy. As Interior Secretary, he’ll oversee hundreds of millions of acres of federal land that oil companies are itching to drill on. But even more, he’ll be coordinating the administration’s “energy dominance” agenda as Trump’s “energy czar,” heading up Trump’s National Energy Council and occupying a seat on the National Security Council.

All told, oil billionaires like Hamm stand to benefit greatly from a new Trump administration that promises to be a close ally of fossil fuel interests, even if this means intensifying the climate chaos that’s destabilizing the world and causing massive human dislocation and suffering.

*Potential Fractures in Billionaire Rule?

There are other billionaire and corporate blocs set to benefit from Trump’s rule, such as private prison and detention companies like CoreCivic and GEO (who Trump Attorney General nominee Pam Biondi lobbied for). And there are a slew of massive individual billionaire donors, from the railroad heir magnate Timothy Mellon to ultra-right shipping barrons Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who gave enormous sums to Trump and other Republicans.

While we face daunting challenges in a period of intensified direct billionaire rule, it’s also worth remembering that there is potential for fissures within the billionaire class. Trump’s cabinet contains blocs that are in tension with each other: neocons versus isolationists, austerity backers who also want vast government subsidies for corporate elites, and people who want to calm markets versus people who want to impose tariffs or just seek political revenge. Trump is notoriously capricious and volatile and is quick to turn on those who were once insiders.

And of course, there’s the fundamental conflict between Trump’s mere rhetoric of populism and his true agenda of billionaire rule that will further immiserate the working class. This will be a challenging period for progressive forces, but the left should seek to monitor and, to the extent possible, exploit divisions among billionaires.

Note: Maps in this post may be updated as new information comes along

This is the first in a new series of LittleSis posts mapping out billionaire power in current U.S. politics, including the new Trump administration. To see the latest posts in this LittleSis series, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on X, Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram.

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an 6 26

IFrame Content

My family’s morning routine is usually pretty ordinary. We wake up early, drink some coffee and get our 1-year-old ready for daycare. But one Wednesday morning last month, I found myself uttering to my wife a sentence that sounded frankly surreal to both of us: “Just to let you know, I’m about to call Trump.”

Then, hoping to avoid any urgent diaper events, I ducked into the next room and dialed up the president.

I’d been trying to reach President Donald Trump for a few days. Each time, my heart would start pounding. After nearly two decades as a journalist, I’m reasonably used to talking to powerful people. But cold-calling the president of the United States — on his personal cellphone — made me feel like a cub reporter all over again.

“Hello?” a voice said on the other end of the line. This time, the president had picked up.

I introduced myself and told Trump I’m a reporter with ProPublica.

“I’m writing a story about a big supporter of yours in the oil industry, Jeff Hildebrand,” I said. “Can I ask what you think about him?”

By this point I had spent months reporting on Hildebrand, a little-known billionaire — and major Trump donor — who owns an empire of low-producing oil and gas wells across the country. “Stripper wells” like these contribute relatively little to the U.S. energy supply but emit vast amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.

By calling the president, I was hoping for some color on his relationship with Hildebrand. He had, after all, named Hildebrand’s wife ambassador to Costa Rica. My reporting so far had also revealed that the administration was gathering advice from oil industry groups backed by Hildebrand, and that it planned to weaken environmental regulations on stripper wells — potentially making Hildebrand even richer.

“I hear he does a good job,” Trump replied. “Don’t know him very well. OK?”

At first I thought the exchange undermined my story, making Hildebrand seem less central to the president’s energy policies than I’d suspected. But I realized that Trump’s comments illustrated something important about how this administration works. Trump appeared to have little clue about Hildebrand’s business, but when I mentioned that it was threatened by the “Biden methane rules,” the president was quick to respond, “Certainly we do the opposite of what Biden did.”

Trump, in other words, may be only vaguely aware of the people and groups helping to rewrite all manner of consequential policies. But what matters in Washington right now are not so much technical policy details but support for the president and an affinity with the broader ideological project: Deregulate everything.

Even if the president is only loosely familiar with Hildebrand, the oil tycoon is someone you should know about. As a climate reporter, I’m always looking for ways to make the seemingly abstract problem of global warming feel more concrete, approachable and even personal. With Hildebrand, I felt I had found a compelling character who is also the poster boy for a hugely consequential issue: Stripper wells collectively contribute just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas, but scientists have found they’re responsible for roughly half the sector’s methane pollution. That means they play an outsize role in climate change, which is amplifying heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

My previous reporting has shown that a former lobbyist for Hildebrand’s company — who now has a top post at the Environmental Protection Agency — has been rewriting methane regulations with advice from the oil industry. (An EPA spokesperson said the official “fulfilled all his ethical obligations to the letter.”)

The EPA’s press office declined to comment on the details of its plans but confirmed it is working on a proposal to “provide relief” to the oil industry, saying in a statement, “We heard consistently from American oil and natural gas producers (shocker that we meet with stakeholders) that the Biden-Harris Administration’s oil and gas methane regulations were unworkable and unnecessarily restricted American energy dominance.”

In the story we ultimately published, I took a deep dive into how Hildebrand made his fortune, racking up dozens of environmental violations across the country, and now stands to benefit from the rollback that his former lobbyist is carrying out.

I asked Hildebrand multiple times for an interview, even sending a letter to his home, but he didn’t respond. A spokesperson for his company, Hilcorp, said its operations complied with state and federal rules, adding that Hilcorp was “proud” of recent efforts to reduce its methane emissions.

As with many climate change stories, it can all sound pretty bleak. But in a world where global warming fixes can seem impossibly daunting, limiting methane pollution from stripper wells is the rare low-hanging fruit, Andrew Logan of Ceres, a climate advocacy group, told me. “If you could lose 6% of production and cut emissions in half, who wouldn’t make that trade?” Logan said.

Instead, the Trump administration is doubling down on the forms of energy that contribute most to global warming. In January, the president invited Hildebrand and two dozen other energy executives to the White House to discuss investing in Venezuela’s decrepit oil industry — which emits more methane, relative to production, than almost any other major oil producing country, according to the International Energy Agency.

Many of the executives couched their enthusiasm with caveats. ExxonMobil’s CEO called Venezuela “uninvestable” without changes to its legal system. The head of ConocoPhillips wanted U.S. government financing.

But Hildebrand had already seen how loyalty could be rewarded. Even though he had no notable operations outside the U.S., he hunched toward a microphone and said in a halting voice, “Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to go to rebuilding the infrastructure in Venezuela.”

“That’s good,” Trump said. “You’ll be very happy.”

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ref apr 1 2026

EPA’s Aaron Szabo Once Helped Write Oil Industry Argument Against Methane Rules — ProPublica

The Trump administration official leading an effort to loosen rules on methane pollution was an unnamed author of key industry arguments against those same rules just four years ago when he was an oil and gas lobbyist.

Aaron Szabo, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, is listed in PDF metadata as the author of a January 2022 comment letter objecting to proposed controls on methane emissions in the oil and gas industry. The letter was submitted to the EPA by the American Exploration and Production Council, which represents some of the industry’s largest emitters of the planet-warming gas, including ConocoPhillips, Diversified Energy and Hilcorp. Szabo’s name does not appear in the document itself, but it can be found in information embedded by the software used to create the PDF file.

Szabo was registered as a lobbyist for one of the AXPC’s lesser-known members, Ovintiv, when he drafted the arguments against the restrictions, which were finalized later in the Biden administration. He has also lobbied for other clients in the oil and chemicals sectors. While he did not hide that work during his confirmation last year as head of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, he described it in terms that avoided any mention of efforts to influence climate policy: “I learned how regulated entities comply with the federal government’s thousands of regulations and policies. I also saw firsthand that the people working in these companies want to ensure the environment is properly protected.”

In his current role overseeing federal climate rules at the EPA, Szabo has been soliciting input and even specific regulatory language from oil industry groups that stand to gain from watered-down methane rules, according to internal emails, calendar entries and records of closed-door conversations reviewed by ProPublica.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed to Szabo’s previous lobbying as evidence that the EPA had effectively been captured by the oil and gas industry. “Now he can do Big Oil’s dirty work from inside the EPA,” Whitehouse told ProPublica in an email.

As part of its plan to “unleash American energy,” the Trump administration has waged an unprecedented campaign against regulations on fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming. One of its biggest moves was to repeal the “endangerment finding” that classified greenhouse gases as pollutants — the basis for the EPA’s authority to limit emissions at all. Rather than throw out the methane rules entirely, however, Szabo’s office is working to revise them, emails and documents show. It has already delayed many of the compliance deadlines until next year.

Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a climate superpollutant, responsible for one-third of the rise in global temperatures since preindustrial times, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. When it escapes into the atmosphere without being burned for energy, it can trap 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide, research shows. The oil and gas business is the largest industrial source of U.S. methane emissions, in part because of leaks from poorly maintained equipment. If it is uneconomical to collect the gas for sale, companies sometimes intentionally release it in a process known as venting.

To cut down on methane discharges, President Joe Biden’s EPA imposed much stricter controls on oil and gas operations, including requiring increased monitoring for leaks and equipment upgrades. According to agency estimates, the new rules would have lowered the industry’s methane emissions by nearly 80%. And, given that the gas breaks down relatively quickly, this would have been one of the fastest ways to reduce global warming.

Industry groups pushed back. In the January 2022 letter that Szabo helped to draft, the AXPC used the word “burdensome” 10 times to describe the new requirements and pushed for more “flexibility” to allow for less expensive leak-detection methods and less frequent monitoring, among other requests.

The group also cast doubt on the rules’ expected climate and health benefits, highlighting what it called “the importance of communicating the significant uncertainties within the estimates.” The AXPC’s chief executive, Anne Bradbury, added in a later statement that the rules risked “undercutting US production in the near and long-term — which will lead to increased energy costs and reduced energy security.”

Do you have any information we should know about Trump’s EPA, oil industry lobbying or methane pollution? Alex Cuadros can be reached by email at alex.cuadros@propublica.org and on Signal at alexcuadros.63.

The AXPC failed to persuade the Biden administration to change its approach. But it renewed its push after President Donald Trump returned to office and ordered federal agencies to “suspend, revise, or rescind” any “undue burden” on domestic energy production.

Szabo, after two years as a fellow at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, joined the administration on Day 1 as an adviser to EPA chief Lee Zeldin. He immediately signaled that he planned to weaken the regulations he had argued against as a lobbyist. His staff met with AXPC representatives as early as Feb. 6, 2025, less than three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, to discuss its petition to “reconsider” the methane rules, according to emails and calendar entries obtained through public records requests and shared with ProPublica by Fieldnotes, a watchdog group that investigates the oil and gas industry. His staff went on to meet with them at least twice more, and Szabo himself was listed as a required attendee for a meeting with Bradbury last July.

The AXPC didn’t respond to emails from ProPublica seeking comment.

According to records of closed-door conversations reviewed by ProPublica, other oil industry representatives have described their meetings with Szabo and his staff as highly favorable to their interests. “Mr. Szabo assured us that the EPA is focused on these [methane] rules and doing everything that can be done to limit the damage they will cause,” the leadership of a major trade group wrote to its members last year in an internal newsletter.

Lee Fuller, of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, also spoke glowingly about his meeting with Szabo’s office on a conference call with industry representatives last year.

“It was one of the more fascinating meetings that we’ve ever had, just because they were suddenly willing to talk to us,” he said. “And they’re also suddenly willing to talk about things that we’ve been trying to get them to do for years, and they’ve never even let it kind of come onto the radar screen.”

The IPAA declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica but linked to a September 2025 letter in which the group publicly asked the EPA for exceptions to the methane rules.

Szabo’s office has even invited oil industry groups to offer specific wording for the revised rules. “We had a call several weeks back re. pneumatics on temporary equipment,” Mike O’Connor of the American Petroleum Institute wrote to an EPA official, referring to devices that are a major source of methane emissions. “EPA had informally requested input on this topic and any suggested reg. text language. We are providing the attached draft document as informal input to EPA’s inquiry.” The draft called for a number of exemptions.

The shift in priorities under Szabo can also be seen in communications from the EPA itself. In a June 2025 email reviewed by ProPublica, an agency official asked O’Connor to meet and discuss alternative leak-detection methods. Echoing the language in the AXPC comment that Szabo helped to draft, the official spoke of “the additional flexibility we would like to pursue.”

“I think their agenda was, from what I could tell, to do what industry wanted,” one former EPA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential discussions, said of Szabo and other Trump appointees at the agency.

“Since when is it a bad thing for public officials to ask the public what they think?” the EPA said in an emailed statement, referring to Szabo’s interactions with oil industry representatives. Szabo “fulfilled all his ethical obligations to the letter. He met with EPA career ethics staff when he started at EPA to ensure he is aware of and complies with federal ethics requirements.”

Szabo’s affinities are hardly a secret. He is thanked by name in the EPA chapter of Project 2025, the deregulatory blueprint for the second Trump administration. As part of the nomination process for his appointment at the EPA, he also submitted ethics disclosures listing oil, natural gas and chemicals companies he had lobbied for.

Still, at his confirmation hearing on March 5 last year, he repeatedly declined to elaborate on his role in Project 2025, beyond saying he provided “general advice and thoughts” on the Clean Air Act.

### Alex Cuadros

Bluesky
- LinkedIn

I report on climate change and how people and institutions are responding to it.

Need to Get in Touch?

I welcome tips or documents about Trump administration climate policy or actions by private companies or institutions that may impact the climate.

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KOCH

Summary

A congressional staffer during the 2017 tax cut negotiations left Congress in January and immediately began to lobby on the tax bill’s implementation for Koch Industries

At every step of the way, the political network of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch has stood behind the Republican effort to massively reduce taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. Lobbying records reviewed by Sludge show that the business that has made the brothers each worth roughly $51.6 billion continues to weigh in on the implementation of the December legislation.

In mid-2017, the Koch network spent millions of dollars promoting the idea of major tax cuts. Then, after the U.S. House passed its tax cut bill, Charles and his wife, Elizabeth Koch, showered House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) with nearly $500,000 in donations to his joint fundraising committee. Once Congress passed the compromise tax bill and it became law, the Koch network announced plans to spend another $20 million on ads to promote the alleged benefits of the law to the public.

Because the tax bill is long and complicated, and it was rushed through Congress at the end of 2017, it requires additional legislation to improve its implementation, including technical fixes to various provisions. That process opens up the bill to more special interests seeking favorable tax treatment. A March appropriations bill included a few fixes to the tax law, but there is more to be done, and special interests are weighing in.

The Koch brothers didn’t want yet another opportunity to influence the tax bill to get away from them. Koch Industries hired former congressional staffers who passed through the revolving door to K Street and are lobbying Congress and the Treasury Department on the implementation of H.R. 1, the tax cut bill—including one lobbyist who left Congress right after the tax bill became law. These lobbyists have close ties to key Republican lawmakers in the tax cut implementation process.

Salim Alameddin was a legislative assistant to Republican Texas congressman Will Hurd through December 2017, when the tax cuts became law. The next month, Alameddin left Congress to join lobbying firm Crossroads Strategies, where he’s a vice president. In the first quarter of this year, Alameddin lobbied on behalf of Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, Koch Industries’ public affairs firm, on the tax bill implementation and on S.2155, the banking deregulation legislation that became law in May, among other issues.

Before working for Hurd, Alameddin was a staff member for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) from July 2015 to January 2017. According to International Business Times, Cornyn—a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which marked up its version of the tax bill, and the House-Senate Conference Committee, which negotiated the final law—inserted a special tax deduction for oil and gas investments into the Senate’s tax legislation, a break that would financially benefit 16 of his congressional colleagues. Koch Industries owns these types of oil and gas investments, called master limited partnerships, including Koch Pipeline Company LP, Flint Hills Resources LP, and PetroLogistics LP, a subsidiary Flint Hills Resources.

Other former government employees are now lobbying for Koch Industries and other corporate interests.

From 2005 to 2008, Christopher Javens was tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee under former chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is no longer chairman but remains on the committee. Javens left Congress for Capitol Tax Partners in 2008 and as recently as the first quarter of this year was lobbying Congress, and possibly his old boss, on behalf of Koch Companies Public Sector LLC on the tax bill.

After a stint in the U.S. House, Jason Goggins joined the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as chief of staff to Commissioner Christopher Giancarlo. The CFTC regulates the trading of commodities including oil and gas. In October 2016, Goggins joined the Daly Consulting Group, where he lobbied on legislation about commodity trading regulation on behalf of Koch Industries and other clients. In April 2018, Goggins moved on to work for Fidelity Investments.

Matthew Lavoie, Koch Industries’ current director of trade policy, once worked for two Republican leaders in Washington. From March 2006 to April 2007 he was a press assistant for then-Congressman Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who is now the vice president. For three months in 2008, Lavoie worked as Rep. Ryan’s press secretary. Ten years later, Lavoie is potentially rubbing shoulders with his former employer as he advocates Koch Industries’ trade and foreign investment interests. Lavoie joined Koch Industries in February and began lobbying that quarter.

And the revolving door swings both ways: Former lobbyist Hazen Marshall, who represented Koch Industries on tax policy in 2014, is now policy director for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). In the first quarter of 2015, Marshall lobbied on tax issues for Koch Companies Public Sector.

Alex Kotch

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gmail 12 25

Who's Funding Kyrsten Sinema's AI Front Group?

Corporate America’s former ace-in-the-hole in the Senate is now lobbying for AI interests including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and ExxonMobil.

when Kyrsten Sinema was a senator, she was corporations’ ace-in-the-hole. Now, she’s their AI lobbyist.

Sinema has been pushing the industry’s interests at the local level in Chandler, Arizona, where she’s tried to bully city officials into approving her client’s AI data center. Using a public records request, Zeteo’s Akshay Gokul obtained documents showing that Sinema has been quietly lobbying politicians in Chandler for months, attempting to sell them on “our AI data center project.”

The former senator has separately launched an AI-industry front group in Washington, DC, called the AI Infrastructure Coalition, where she’s now representing corporate giants like Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft, and ExxonMobil; the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; and utility firms PG&E, Next Era, and Pinnacle West.

In this must-watch video,Zeteo’s Frank Cappelloreviews Sinema’s lobbying for the AI industry, sharing the mobster-style pitch she made to officials in Chandler, and his own hope that she manages to “cash out before the AI bubble completely bursts.” We’d hate to see her lose the bag.

===

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ggl 10 25

AI Overview

The "revolving door" describes former government officials becoming lobbyists after retirement, and while federal law restricts this, there are ongoing efforts to change the regulations

. Currently, former senators face a two-year ban on lobbying, while former House members have a one-year ban. New legislation, such as the "Close the Revolving Door Act," aims to increase these restrictions, with one proposal suggesting a lifetime ban for former members of Congress and longer waiting periods for staff, according to Congress.gov.

Current federal rules

Former Senators: Prohibited from lobbying Congress for two years after leaving office.
Former House Members: Prohibited from lobbying Congress for one year after leaving office.
Former Staff: More specific restrictions apply to former legislative staff, with some staff being restricted from lobbying their former committee for one year.

Proposed changes and other details

Legislation: New bills like the "Close the Revolving Door Act" have been introduced to strengthen these restrictions, as seen on Congress.gov and Congress.gov.
Lifetime ban: Some proposals seek to implement a lifetime ban on lobbying for former members of Congress.
Longer waiting periods: Proposed legislation also seeks to extend the waiting period for former legislative staff from one year to six years.
Revenue impact: Studies show a correlation between lobbying by former officials and the revenue generated by lobbying firms, with senior officials often having the biggest impact.
State variations: Rules vary significantly by state, as many have their own "revolving door" provisions for former officials who become lobbyists.

S.2561 - 118th Congress (2023-2024): Close the Revolving ...

Close the Revolving Door Act of 2023. This bill increases restrictions on lobbying and penalties for violations of such restrictio...

Congress.gov

H.R.3554 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Close the Revolving ...

May 21, 2025 — A BILL. To provide greater controls and restrictions on revolving door lobbying. Be it enacted by the Senate and House...

Congress.gov

Should Congress close the revolving door in the technology ...

Nov 4, 2021 — [1]: Former legislative branch employees currently face certain post-employment restrictions depending on their chamber...

Brookings

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comm dr jake johnson

this Is Corruption’: Manchin Chief of Staff Now Chief Lobbyist for Big Oil

“’Shocking!’ said absolutely no one,” responded one climate advocate.

Jake Johnson

Jan 13, 2023

The top aide of Sen. Joe Manchin, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, is leaving the West Virginia Democrat’s office to work directly for Big Oil as a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, one of the most powerful influence-peddling organizations in the United States.

Axios, which first reported the news of Lance West’s departure to API on Thursday, noted that “through the on-again and off-again Build Back Better negotiations, he developed a reputation as a fierce advocate for Manchin’s positions.”

Advocates Warn of ‘Forced Labor’ Camp for Homeless People in Utah Designed to Enforce Trump Order

Manchin, the top recipient of oil and gas industry donations in Congress, ultimately succeeded in killing the Build Back Better package, which contained more ambitious climate measures than the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, a law packed with fossil fuel giveaways that Manchin helped secure.

That the aide who helped Manchin fight for the industry’s interests in Congress is moving on to work as an oil lobbyist hardly surprised watchdogs and progressive critics, who cast the transition as a glaring example of Washington’s ever-spinning revolving door.

“This is corruption. Period,” tweeted Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy and a former co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign.

Others, including Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media, reacted with mock astonishment:

IFrame Content

West, who will be API’s vice president of federal government relations, joins the ranks of other former Capitol Hill staffers and lawmakers who have left Congress to represent the industries they were previously tasked with overseeing and regulating.

According to data compiled by OpenSecrets, more than 60% of oil and gas lobbyists in Washington, D.C. previously worked for the federal government in some capacity—from entry-level aide to chief of staff for members of the U.S. House and Senate.

API, which spent $3.6 million on lobbying in 2022, has been sued by New York City and the state of Minnesota for its role in misleading the public about the climate crisis.

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readsludge paywall

Joe Manchin has landed his K Street gig, with a Wall Street gig on the side. The 77-year old retired senator, a former Democrat turned independent, will join lobbying, consulting, and investment firm Bondi Partners as a senior advisor, the company announced on Friday.

The news comes on the back of the announcement, earlier this month, that Manchin had been named an advisor to investment giant Apollo, on matters including energy markets, and that he would join the board of its insurance arm, retirement services company Athene.

Bondi Partners, founded by former Australian Ambassador Joe Hockey, has also brought on several former Trump administration officials in recent years. Its announcement of Manchin touts its “growing” U.S. team: its staff already included former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former principal deputy chief of staff Emma Doyle, and others.

Bondi Partners has offices in Sydney and Washington D.C. and advises clients seeking to expand into the U.S. market. In addition to lobbying and policy analysis, the firm’s services include reputation management and arranging access to capital, from sources ranging from private equity firms to global banks.

“Senator Manchin’s extensive knowledge of energy markets and economic policy will be invaluable to our clients and partners,” its announcement said.

The firm has a lobbying arm, Pacific Partners, which touts its senior advisor Doyle’s nickname as “the Trump whisperer,” due to her insight into the president’s management style. It also has an investment fund, 1941 Fund, focused on the defense and cyber industries, a joint initiative with Australia-based Ellerston Capital.

Manchin was a key centrist figure in Capitol Hill drama since joining the U.S. Senate in 2010. He frequently broke from his Democratic colleagues to halt major legislation and was opposed to reforming the Senate rules to eliminate the de facto filibuster that has increasingly made passing bills difficult for both parties over the past decade or so. In the first years of the Biden administration, he gained notoriety for doling out favors to his fossil fuel industry donors and raking in corporate PAC donations.

Bondi Partners is not a large Capitol Hill lobbying shop, but its top federal lobbying client represents many of the largest companies in the world....

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lever

late last week, after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) obliterated much of what was left of President Joe Biden’s agenda by refusing to support his party’s scaled-back social safety net, climate, and tax package, some observers wondered what was in it for Manchin, the corporate Democrat who holds all the power in the divided Senate.

As The Lever has previously documented, the Democratic rotating villain role that Manchin is playing typically ends with a cushy landing spot on K Street working for big business. That’s certainly already true for one of Manchin’s longtime aides.

Jonathan Kott went from working as Manchin’s senior advisor to leading a well-funded dark money group that spent millions to crush Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (Ind.-Vt.) 2020 presidential bid, and then back to Capitol Hill. Now, Kott is a corporate lobbyist for health insurers, drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, and Fox News, while the media calls on the so-called “Manchin whisperer-for-hire” to offer commentary about what has motivated his former boss to repeatedly obstruct his party’s agenda.

Kott’s path through Washington’s proverbial “revolving door” showcases the lucrative career opportunities available to Democratic Hill staffers: If you work for conservative Democrats who protect corporate interests and loyally attack progressives, corporate America will come calling with a big bag of cash.

Kott did not respond to The Lever’s request for comment.

The trend of those working in Congress — whether as lawmakers or aides — leveraging their Capitol Hill connections and experience to work on behalf of wealthy special interests is not new, and the phenomenon has grown over time. The pattern is a stark reminder of the disingenuousness of the political establishment, which purports to prioritize the needs of constituents while getting rewarded by corporate interests for preserving the status quo.

A 2019 Public Citizenstudy found that nearly two-thirds of lawmakers who had retired or were defeated at the ballot box went on to work in the influence industry. Nearly 60 percent of these former members of Congress had taken up work for lobbying firms, consulting firms, trade organizations, or business groups to influence — and impede — federal government action.

Not surprisingly, staffers who move to K Street are likely to earn more money based on how many personal connections they retain on Capitol Hill, according to a 2017 study.

An Anti-Progressive Dark Money Project

Kott’s career path is a cautionary tale of how our political system — and its perverse incentives — chews up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed individuals who think they can effect change in the lives of real people through public service, only to get swept up in the game of trying to profit off their public sector experience through protecting the interests of the elite.

Kott’s career in public service began with an internship in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he worked to address homelessness.

“When I went to HUD, I realized I could help homeless people get a place to live, and that’s what I thought I would spend my time in politics doing,” he told The Hill. “But I got drawn into the press side, and that’s where I wound up.”

Kott went on to intern for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and then served as a press aide for the presidential campaign of former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the most notorious rotating corporate villain of the Obama era.

According to The Hill, Kott then went to work for the corporatist think tank Third Way, where he apparently “helped craft moderate messaging and policy.” Kott got the job by contacting Third Way co-founder Jonathan Cowan, who ran HUD while Kott interned there.

By 2013, Kott was back in the public sector, working as the communications director for Manchin, the coal-baron-turned-senator. For some time, he simultaneously worked for both Manchin and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a conservative Democrat and close Biden ally. Kott would go on to serve as Manchin’s senior advisor, too.

In the fall of 2019, Kott left Manchin’s office, according to Legistorm. He soon founded the Big Tent Project Fund, a dark money group focused on crushing Sanders’ presidential campaign.

The nonprofit spent $4.8 million on digital ads attacking Sanders, including those under the name United We Succeed. The ads criticized Sanders as a socialist who wanted to increase taxes on the middle class, saying that voting for him would mean Americans “losing our private health care.”

Kott told *Politico* of the ad campaign: “Despite over 50 years in public life, Bernie Sanders has never been fully vetted. The Big Tent Project will shed light on his record of politically toxic policy proposals starting in Nevada and South Carolina.”

The Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based campaign finance group, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 2020 alleging that the Big Tent Project Fund’s primary purpose was defeating Sanders, and the group had thus violated election laws by not registering as a political committee and not publicly disclosing its donors. CLC last year sued the FEC for failing to take action.

According to a copy of its tax return obtained by The Lever, the Big Tent Project Fund raised more than $12 million in 2020.

While the organization is not required to disclose its funding sources, its tax return makes clear it was financed by just a dozen donors. More than 80 percent of its cash came from just three donors who gave at least seven figures, including one who donated more than $6 million.

In addition to its anti-Sanders ads, the Big Tent Project Fund reported donating nearly $3 million to Center Action Now, a dark money group created by Tim Miller, a past campaign aide to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

Center Action Now’s digital ads were designed to target center-right Republicans and independents with messages attacking Sanders and boosting then presidential candidate Joe Biden as the moderate choice. Some of the ads contained general messages encouraging people to vote. The group never filed independent expenditure reports with the Federal Election Commission.

The Big Tent Project Fund also reported donating $1.3 million to the Progressive Policy Institute, a corporate-aligned, ostensibly centrist think tank.

The only independent contractor Big Tent Project Fund listed in its tax return is a Delaware-based company called CMP Partners, LLC, which Big Tent paid $4.9 million. According to Delaware incorporation documents for CMP Partners obtained by OpenSecrets, the company listed “Terrence Walsh” as its authorized representative.

Terrence Walsh appears to be Terry Walsh, president of the The Strategy Group, who was a top campaign advisor to former President Barack Obama.

CMP Partners’ only other appearances in FEC records have been related to two additional outside groups attacking progressive candidates: The company handled direct mail for Americans For Tomorrow’s Future, a super PAC that attempted to defeat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in the 2020 primary, and also ran digital ads for Third Way against progressive Nina Turner in 2021, according to FEC independent expenditures filings.

Walsh did not respond to a request for comment.

“Slogans And Yelling Isn’t The Way It Works”

After the 2020 primary campaign, Kott returned to Capitol Hill, serving once again as a top aide to Coons. He soon decamped for K Street, becoming a partner at the corporate lobbying firm Capitol Counsel last June.

“Jon was a very effective communications director and trusted senior advisor for seven years,” Manchin said in a press release issued by the firm. “He is a thoughtful communicator and tactician with a true understanding of the importance of bipartisanship. I’m excited for him to be taking on this new role.”

Coons, for his part, said in the press release, “I’ve relied heavily on [Kott’s] candid advice, strategic insights, and vast media and political network. I wish him the very best in his new role at Capitol Counsel and look forward to maintaining our close friendship.”

In this new role, Kott has lobbied for oil and gas giant ExxonMobil as well as the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a lobbying group that represents oil, gas, and chemical interests.

He’s also lobbied for the Healthcare Leadership Council, a group representing prominent health insurers and drug companies opposed to universal health care, and pharmaceutical company Biogen. Kott’s work for Biogen has involved lobbying on efforts by Democrats to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

In June, Kott registered to lobby for Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, including on “corporate tax issues.”

Kott is hardly the only recent example of a corporate Democratic aide who traded in public service for an influence industry gig. For instance, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) former communications director John LaBombard left her office to become senior vice president at ROKK Solutions earlier this year — moving from an office allied with the drug industry to a public relations firm that has worked for Big Pharma.

While Kott now works as a corporate lobbyist, news outlets have regularly invited him on their programs to defend his former boss, Manchin, as the senator works to impede the Democratic Party agenda on issues like climate change and health care.

In a January appearance on CNN, Kott sought to explain away Manchin’s refusal to end the Senate legislative filibuster, a rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. This position puts Manchin on the side of powerful corporate lobbying groups, but Kott framed Manchin’s position as “looking to preserve how the Senate works and force them to work in a bipartisan way.”

He added, “Slogans and yelling isn’t the way it works.”

Kott told The Daily Beast in April that Manchin “doesn’t really care about party affiliation and is just focused on what he’s hearing from his constituents. And that’s basically how he handles his votes. He goes home most weekends. He talks to as many people as he can, comes back and decides how he’s gonna vote. And that’s basically what he does.”

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Multiple people inside President Donald Trump's administration are already jumping ship after less than a year on the job and are securing highly lucrative jobs as lobbyists.

That's according to a Wednesday article by Politico's Caitlin Oprysko and Sophia Cai, who reported that high-profile lobbying firms are now scooping up several Trump administration staffers who have only been in the White House for a handful of months. Oprysko and Cai noted that the Washington D.C. "revolving door" between lobbying and government that Trump promised to bulldoze with his 2016 "drain the swamp" mantra remains alive and well given the announcement of the new hires.

"[B]arely a half-year into his second administration, a handful of senior White House aides are already heading for the exits — and right through the revolving door between the federal government and K Street, where they’re lining up cushy lobbying gigs," they wrote.

White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields is leaving the administration to join the Republican-run lobbying firm CGCN Group, after just seven months in his previous role. Fields was often quoted as a White House spokesperson in major media outlets, accusing NPR and PBS of "creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers' dime" in a May article for Axios and justifying Trump's attacks on large law firms for having allegedly "propelled one-sided justice by providing pro bono resources to those causes that make our nation more dangerous and less free" in a recent Wall Street Journal report.

IFrame Content

In addition to Fields' exit, Trent Morse — who is a deputy assistant to the president and the deputy director of the White House's Office of Presidential Personnel — is launching his own lobbying firm, while also teaming up with the powerhouse lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who worked alongside Morse at two other lobbying firms over the last decade, heaped praise on Morse as he made his exit, calling him "an important and integral part of the successes we’ve had."

Ivan Adler, who runs an executive hiring firm in Washington, told Politico that the early exits of senior Trump staffers was proof that so many lobbying clients are "looking for a sherpa for this administration, just because it’s so different," and that "people are taking advantage" of their knowledge by hiring them directly from the White House.

Federal law requires a year-long "cooling off" period from the time a former government worker leaves their position to when they can begin officially lobbying the West Wing and representing foreign entities, meaning that for Fields and Morse, their cooling off window will be longer than their actual time serving in the White House. However, they can begin lobbying Congress immediately.

Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety.

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HOMAN REV DOOR GEO GP

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Dispatch writer Kevin Williamson says FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, “the emotionally incontinent former cop turned podcaster appointed for some inexplicable reason by Donald Trump,” doesn’t realize he is now the swamp.

“What Bongino is doing—and whining about!—is the swamp-thing two-step,” writes Williamson, “the swampy revolving-door career path, the exploitation of one’s former position and contacts to make money in a purely self-interested way after leaving government—or, as in Bongino’s case, between feeding sessions while tearily attached to the taxpayers’ teat.”

“The question that interests me,” asks Williamson “… is whether Bongino and others like him are simply too stupid to understand they are The Swamp.

Bongino has described the FBI, which he now leads as “irredeemably corrupt.” But Williamson said if Bongino genuinely believed the FBI was irredeemably corrupt, he would not waste time on the impossible project of trying to reform it.

IFrame Content

“If he were a man of integrity acting in good faith. Irredeemably means something,” Williamson said. “On the other hand, if he were a purely cynical and self-serving calculator, then doing a stint at the FBI would be worth something: A dishonest man coming out of a senior management role at the FBI could milk the conspiracy nuts and rage-monkeys for millions in book sales and appearance fees promising to expose the secrets that “they—THEY—don’t want you to know.”

Williamson, A former National Review writer, says Bongino belongs to the “too stupid” set because he does not think “such energetic, sanctimonious, and utterly unexamined self-righteousness is the kind of thing that even a genuinely wicked person can fake for so long.”

“There is a genuine sense among these Trump sycophants that what they do isn’t corrupt when they do it,” Williamson argues. “… There is no crime that cannot be set aside for Trump supporters … like Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff convicted of taking bribes, as well as … Larry Hoover, the founder of what is arguably the single most significant criminal enterprise in these United States … responsible for who knows how many thousands of murders.”

But Williamson fears there isn’t much to be done about the federal revolving door between public and private sectors, and definitely not by Bongino—who is fresh from the private sector himself after his own stint in government.

Read the full Dispatch report here.

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3 of Trump's top cabinet-level picks recently worked as ...}:

Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com › Politics](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-lobbyists-ties-wiles-bondi-duffy-ballard-2024-11)

5 days ago — Incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, and Transportation secretary nominee Sean Duffy have all ...

several of Donald Trump's top picks have recently been lobbyists.
Susan Wiles, Trump's incoming chief of staff, maintained ties to a lobbying firm until this month.
Sean Duffy, Trump's pick for Transportation secretary, has lobbied for a group of major airlines.

President-elect Donald Trump is set to rely on a trio of former lobbyists to help implement his agenda to shake up Washington.

Incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, and Transportation secretary nominee Sean Duffy have all been registered lobbyists. According to disclosure filings, Bondi and Wiles did lobbying work as recently as this year, with Duffy working as a lobbyist into 2023.

Their combined clients range from blue chip companies — including Amazon, GM, and Uber — to insurance giants like MetLife and Fidelity National Financial. Wiles and Bondi were also separately registered to lobby for foreign interests, which included one of Nigeria's largest political parties and the Qatarian embassy.

Wiles and Bondi have both once worked for Ballard Partners, once a regional firm in Florida that exploded in popularity due to its ties to Trump world. Earlier this summer, the firm opened an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

"Part of why you hired Ballard Partners over the last few years is knowing that if Trump is president, the people you are working with stand at having a pretty good chance at having influence in a Trump administration," Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a public interest group, told Business Insider.

Brian Ballard, a major Republican fundraiser and founder of the firm, did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Wiles continued to have K-Street ties as she helped run Trump's campaign.

Wiles, according to The New York Times, did not cut ties to her most recent firm until Trump announced his intention to have her lead his second White House.

Her past work included an effort to get the Trump administration to approve a cooper and gold mine in a sensitive area of Alaska. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, widely viewed as a key vote in the narrowly divided US Senate, and other top state officials have long opposed the Pebble Partnership. The EPA, under Obama, Trump, and Biden's administrations, have repeatedly opposed efforts to mine in the bay, home to one of the world's largest salmon fisheries.

Duffy, who if confirmed would oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, lobbied in 2020 for an airline group that includes American, Delta, and United among its members.

Starting not long after he left Congress in 2019, Duffy lobbied for Polaris, a US auto manufacturer known its off-road and recreational vehicles. Former lawmakers are only restricted from lobbying Congress for a year, though they can immediately lobby the rest of the federal government. According to his disclosures, Duffy's work at times included advising the company on how to navigate EV incentives and tariffs.

ProPublica previously reported that Duffy lobbied White House trade adviser Peter Navarro as Polaris sought to win exemptions to tariffs on the parts it was importing. ProPublica found that Polaris' efforts, including use of Duffy, ultimately led the company to get most of what it wanted.

Bondi's work for Amazon was related to trade and tariff policy, according to disclosures. She also lobbied for General Motors, Uber, Fidelity National, Carnival North America, and even Major League Baseball.

Trump didn't start the revolving door, but the swamp could get larger.

Wiles, Bondi, and Duffy's respective work all fits within the larger revolving door narrative that dominates Washington, even as Trump portrays himself as ready to shake up the status quo.

Ron Klain, President Biden's first chief of staff and longtime adviser, was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae in the early 2000s. Steve Ricchetti, another longtime Biden fixture, spent so much time lobbying that top Obama administration officials tried to prevent then-Vice President Biden from hiring him after the 2008 election. His brother Jeff Ricchetti, who remains a registered lobbyist, saw his business boom after Biden won the 2020 election.

President Barack Obama initially received high praise for his limits on hiring lobbyists who had recently lobbied the federal agency they sought to join, though he granted some limited waivers including to a former top lobbyist to Raytheon. Ultimately, Obama was unable to stop the revolving door, as Politico reported in 2015.

Hauser said what stands out about the Trump team so far is their unorthodox approach to the transition, including refusing to sign formal agreements with the current administration which would include ethics guidelines.

While Trump, like Obama and Biden, issued an ethics-related executive order after taking office in 2017, Hauser isn't convinced it will happen again.

"Given the aversion of his transition to the ethics process of the transition, I think it's an open question whether or not he is going to make his appointees sign additional ethics pledges in office this time," Hauser said.

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Here’s how much Democrats get paid to shill for fossil fuels

Two former Democratic lawmakers made six-figure salaries for falsely promoting methane gas as a climate solution, tax documents seen by HEATED show.

ARIELLE SAMUELSON

JAN 18

In January 2022, only a few years after leaving the elected seat she held for six years, former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota got a new job: convincing climate-concerned liberals to love the fossil fuel industry.

“It’s clear we have an existential threat to the planet,” said Heitkamp, in a December 2022 commercial for the methane gas lobbying group Natural Allies For a Clean Energy Future. “We should be doing everything that we can to help other countries do what we did, which is dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions by using natural gas.”

The ad—titled “Real Talk with Heidi Heitkamp”—was one of a handful of public relations jobs Heitkamp did that year for Natural Allies, some of which she did alongside former Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Together, the notoriously moderate Democrats wrote a sponsored article in Politico claiming that “natural gas is accelerating our clean-energy future,” and an op-ed in Newsweek declaring that methane gas can “actually achieve our shared global climate goals faster.” Landrieu also did her own “Real Talk” commercial in March 2022.

For these ads and op-eds, Heitkamp was paid $185,266 and Landrieu was paid $210,690 in 2022, according to IRS 990 tax documents obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute and seen by HEATED. The documents show payments made to Heidi Heitkamp Inc. and to Landrieu’s consulting firm VNF Solutions.

A screenshot of Natural Allies’ 990 tax form from FY2022, showing payments to Landrieu’s consulting firm and Heitkamp. They also show $1 million in payments to Mad Global, a public relations firm that specializes in politics and government, and more than $3.5 million to Omnicom Public Relations Group, a global public relations company.

It’s unclear if these positions represented full-time jobs; both Heitkamp and Landrieu were hired as members of Natural Allies’ “Leadership Council” in early 2022. According to a press release about the hires, the Leadership Council seeks “to bring greater awareness to the foundational role natural gas must play in transitioning to a clean energy future.” Neither Heitkamp nor Landrieu responded to HEATED’s request for comment.

Whatever the case, the numbers are a rare glimpse into the lucrative business of greenwashing the fossil fuel industry. Natural Allies is run and funded entirely by fossil fuel companies, including Williams, TC Energy, Kinder Morgan, National Fuel Gas, Southern Company Gas, and Cheniere Energy.

“It's not every day we get to see the price tag of a former U.S. senator’s advocacy,” said Charlie Spatz, a senior researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute.

Spatz said the numbers also highlight one of the reasons it may be so hard to pass truly effective climate policy in Congress.

“It's sending a message to current Senators that maybe you shouldn't be so harsh on the fossil fuel industry, if they're going to take care of you after you finish,” he said.

A six-figure salary to spread climate misinformation

With each passing year, the science on methane gas pollution and climate change becomes more damning. A recently revised analysis from Robert Warren Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell, found that greenhouse gas emissions from liquified methane gas “are larger than those from domestically produced coal, ranging from 18% to 185% greater for the average cruise distance of an [liquified methane gas] tanker.”

At the same time, with each passing year, more and more former Democratic lawmakers are lining up to tout methane gas as “climate-friendly” in exchange for a paycheck from Natural Allies, which is currently running a seven-figure campaign to target young, liberal, and Black and Latino voters “as effectively as we have messaged to the right.”

In addition to Heitkamp and Landrieu, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, and former Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek all accepted positions with Natural Allies in 2023.

Those former lawmakers’ salaries were not disclosed on Natural Allies’s 2022 tax forms, as they were not yet hired by the organization. And it’s unclear if they will be disclosed on future forms, as the IRS only requires that non-profits disclose the five contractors with the highest salaries over $100,000.

However much they are making, they are spreading messages about methane gas that climate scientists have roundly decried as misleading.

“Their claims are all either extremely vague or disproved with middle-school-level science,” said Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Project Drawdown, who previously worked at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“Using natural gas warms the climate. Period, full stop,” said Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “There is no world in which natural gas is a long-term ‘solution’ to the climate problem.”

Natural Allies cites multiple “independent studies” to support its claim that methane gas is the best way to solve the climate crisis. But, as we reported last year, all of those studies were funded at least in part by fossil fuel interests, and none were published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Actual peer-reviewed science with no industry backing has shown the opposite of what Natural Allies claims. According to a 2021 systematic review of the scientific literature on methane gas, increasing investments in the fossil fuel carries a long-term risk of delaying the clean energy transition and worsening the climate crisis. That’s because investing in further natural gas development “could lock-out emerging renewable technologies for extended periods.”

Building new gas pipelines, LNG terminals, and gas-fired power plants “pose a particularly great risk for carbon lock-ins,” scientists wrote this year in the journal Nature Energy.

What Natural Allies is doing is called “solutions denial,” a common form of climate misinformation, as we previously reported:

“It's an absolute tried-and-tested argument within the disinformation playbook to constantly create more interim milestones before we achieve what a real necessary transition looks like,” said [Jennie] King, who works at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “So taxpayer money [goes] into creating new dependencies on [fossil fuels], which ultimately in the long term, make it much harder for us to achieve an actual clean energy transition.”

But former Democratic lawmakers and mainstream media are still more than willing to spread the misinformation coming from Natural Allies, so long as Natural Allies is willing to pay for it. Since 2020, Natural Allies has spent $10 million on a national PR campaign targeting Democratic voters, including more than $4 million to place ads in E&E News and Politico newsletters, Axios, Newsweek, Vox, the Wall Street Journal, and across cable news stations, according to reporting from the Guardian and Floodlight.

These campaigns are effective, in part, because it is very difficult to tell who is behind them. Readers of these news outlets may not recognize, as we uncovered last year, that Natural Allies’ ads are a form of fossil fuel industry climate disinformation. And that is the real price of Heitkamp and Landrieu’s sell out: a deception not measured in dollars, but in the degrees threatening our livable climate.

Former Sen. Mark Kirk and old flame retroactively register as lobbyists

Posted by Keturah Hetrick on Sept. 28, 2020

Ex-Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and his one-time girlfriend quietly registered as first-time lobbyists for work they began a year ago.

Kirk and Dodie McCracken started work last October on behalf of MP Materials. The rare-earth-materials mining company hired the pair to lobby on "rare earth materials supply chain and critical supply chain issues," according to a disclosure filed last week. The filing does not indicate whether or not the contract is still active.

McCracken made headlines in 2012, when the senator's ex-wife accused Kirk of hiding $143,000 in campaign payments to McCracken, then his girlfriend. The FEC later decided that the payments did not run afoul of the law, according to the Chicago Tribune. In addition to her apparent campaign work, McCracken served as district director and press secretary to then-Rep. Kirk from 2001-2003.

She and the senator are working through Kirk Global Advisors, which Kirk established after losing his 2016 reelection bid. McCracken's role with the firm, as well as her current relationship to Kirk, are unclear.

[[ vs glass ceiling BS

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intercept

silicon Valley Bank Used Former McCarthy Staffers to Weaken Regulations, Lobby FDIC

Ken Klippenstein

Two senior aides to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy were among the top lobbyists for the bank at the center of a new financial crisis.

aFTER SUCCESSFULLY LOBBYING for the rollback of new rules applied to Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, lobbyists for Silicon Valley Bank immediately began pressing their case further to the federal authority that insures bank deposits in the event of another crisis, according to lobbying disclosures reviewed by The Intercept.

The lobbying effort managed to exempt banks the size of Silicon Valley Bank from more stringent regulations, including stress tests aimed at uncovering the type of weaknesses that led to the bank’s implosion Friday. Two of the bank’s top lobbyists previously served as senior staffers for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who himself pushed for the repeal of significant pieces of the landmark Wall Street reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank.

The meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank represents the second-largest bank collapse in American history and the first since the 2008 financial crisis. Over 90 percent of the bank’s deposits exceed the amount federally guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, meaning that those people may either never see their money again or lose substantial amounts.

Silicon Valley Bank President Greg Becker himself pushed for weaker banking regulations, telling Congress to lift “enhanced prudential standards … given the low risk profile of our activities,” as The Lever reported.

A chief culprit, economists say, is legislation President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018, which rolled back key parts of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. That 2018 legislation, called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, passed with strong support from the Republican Party and critical support from some Democrats. Among those leading the charge was McCarthy, then House majority leader.

“We’re going to move this Senate bill directly to the president’s desk to ensure these reforms help the economy to grow further by making community banks stronger,” McCarthy said of the legislation in 2018. “This is going to free up a great deal of capital and this will help a lot."

two former staffers for McCarthy are registered lobbyists for Silicon Valley Bank, according to the disclosures, one of whom lobbied on the Dodd-Frank repeal law that experts say made the current crisis more likely.

Other Silicon Valley Bank lobbyists worked for political figures across both parties, including former President Bill Clinton; former Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wy.; former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.; former Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.; and former Rep. Jay Inslee, now governor of Washington state.

Brian Worth served as coalitions director for McCarthy from January 2011 to May 2014, when McCarthy was House Republican whip. Since March 2017 Worth has been a partner at the Franklin Square Group, where he’s worked as a lobbyist for Silicon Valley Bank. Wes McClelland served as a policy adviser and senior policy adviser for McCarthy from April 2011 to September 2015 and joined Franklin Square last January, where he has also lobbied on the bank’s behalf.

Franklin Square is the only lobby group that Silicon Valley Bank has used in over a decade and has lobbied on the bank’s behalf every year from 2009 to 2023. The only other lobby shops the bank has employed are DLA Piper from 2009 to 2010 and McGuireWoods from 2010 to 2011.

A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Worth lobbied on the repeal law beginning on October 1, 2017, right up to its passage on May 24, 2018. Then, starting on July 1, 2018, Silicon Valley Bank began lobbying the FDIC — the very same federal agency responsible for insuring bank deposits and was tasked with implementing critical portions of Dodd-Frank.

Though Franklin Square has lobbied on behalf of Silicon Valley Bank since 2009, the 2018 filing represents the first time it had ever lobbied the FDIC.

Beginning on April 20, 2022, McClelland also began lobbying the FDIC for Silicon Valley Bank, which both he and Worth continued right up until the bank’s last lobbying filing this year.

The lobbying disclosures do not provide any more detail about the work. Neither Worth nor McClelland immediately responded to requests for comment.

“This was a 100 percent avoidable problem,” economist Dean Baker told The Intercept in an email, pointing to the Dodd-Frank repeal bill.“That bill raised the asset threshold above which banks have to undergo stress tests from $50 billion to $250 billion. SVB would have been required to undergo regular stress tests before the revision; among the stresses you look at are sharp rises in interest rates, which is apparently what did in SVB. Presumably, if its books had been subject to this test, the risk would have been detected and they would have been required to raise more capital and/or shed deposits.”

eurasia rev

Before the financial collapse come the aggressive anti-regulation lobbyists. These are often of the same ilk: loathing anything resembling oversight, restriction, reporting and monitoring. They are incarnations of the frontier, symbolically toting guns and slaying the natives, seeking wealth beyond paper jottings, compliance and bureaucratic tedium.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), for a period of time the preferred bank for start-ups, is the bitter fruit of that harvest. Three days prior to the second-largest failure of a US financial institution since the implosion of Washington Mutual (Wamu) in 2008, lobbyists for the banking sector had reason to gloat. They had the ears of a number of GOP lawmakers and were pressing the case that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had little reason to sharpen regulations in the industry.

As a matter of fact, the converse case was put: the financial environment was proving too stringent, and needed easing up. This effort built on gains made during the Trump administration, which saw the passing of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. Then House majority leader Kevin McCarthy was particularly keen on winding back elements of the Dodd-Frank banking measuresintroduced in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2018, he got much of what he wished for.

Lobbyists for SVB were particularly aggressive in that endeavour, and even went so far as to seek exemptions from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the body responsible for insuring bank deposits in times of crisis and institutional oversight. Two former staffers for McCarthy so happen to be registered lobbyists for SVB, a fact that shows how the US revolving door between politics and business continues to whirr at some speed. The SVB lobby list also includes figures who found employment under former President Bill Clinton, former Senator Mike Enzi (R-My), former Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and former Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), just to name a few.

The crisis duly came. On March 9, startups and venture capitalists made a run on SVB as its share price took a tumble. SVB had sold its available-for-sale (AFS) portfolio for US$21 billion at a US$1.8 billion loss. In a patch-up, capital raising response, SVB then announced that it would sell US$2.25 billion in new shares.

By the next day, the FDIC had placed SVB into receivership. The corporation promised that insured depositors would have access to their insured deposits on March 13; uninsured depositors would have to wait a bit longer, expecting an “advance within the next week.” But given that 90% of the bank’s deposits exceeded the amount guaranteed by the FDIC, the prospects for adequate recovery proved uncertain, at least till the FDIC, Federal Reserve and US Treasury promised protection for them.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo proved rather green in suggesting that the financial system, as things stood, would be resilient enough to hold off any contagion. “Federal regulators are paying attention to this particular financial institution,” he told CNN, “and when we think about the broader financial system, we’re very confident in the ability and the resilience of the system.”

This is bound to be misplaced. It’s certainly not the view held byformer FDIC head, Sheila Blair,who argues that there are other banks in the system with large amounts of uninsured deposits and unrealised losses. “These banks that have large amounts of institutional uninsured money … that’s going to be hot money that runs if there’s a sign of trouble.”

David Sacks of Craft Ventures is also of the view that immediate intervention at the government level was required. “Where is Powell?” he wondered. “Where is [US Secretary of the Treasury Janet] Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW.” SVB, he proposed, should be placed with a top four bank. “Do this before Monday open or there will be contagion and the crisis will spread.”

Questions are being asked whether the anti-regulatory bug has gotten to the various authorities and agencies. Mike Novogratz, founder of Galaxy Digital, pondered whether all banks were now being treated like hedge funds. “Seems like a policy mistake.”

Economists such as Peter Schiff are even more damning, claiming that the entire US banking sector is set for a cathartic clean-up that will be greater than that following 2008. US banks were holding “long-term paper at extremely low interest rates. They can’t compete with short-term Treasuries.” In such an environment, depositors, in the pursuit of higher yields, would initiate mass withdrawals, resulting in a tidal wave of bank collapses.

Blame for the SVB debacle has been extensive. “This was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs [venture capitalists],” opined Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor based at Restive Ventures. “This is going to be remembered as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting off its nose to spite its face.”

The oversight advocates are bound to agree. Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the non-profit Better Markets, is certainly one. “SVB’s stunningly quick collapse should put an end to the nonstop attempts by banks, lobbyists and their political allies to weaken capital and other financial regulations that protect depositors, consumers, investors and financial stability.”

This is likely to prove to be a flight of fancy. The banking lobbyists have destructive form and staying power. In 2019, the International Monetary Fund published a working paper noting that bank lobbying, in general, produced “regulatory capture, which lessens the support for tighter rules and enforcement. This, in turn, allows riskier practices and worse economic outcomes.”

As the great financial crisis showed, financial regulation is often the antidote to banditry. The pillaging and frontier types will always resist such tendencies. Again, they have been found wanting, and again, the harmful consequences of their ideas are going to prove deep and extensive.

lever

Eight years before the second-largest bank failure in American history occurred this week, the bank’s president personally pressed Congress to reduce scrutiny of his financial institution, citing the “low risk profile of our activities and business model,” according to federal records reviewed by The Lever.

Three years later — after the bank spent more than half a million dollars on federal lobbying — lawmakers obliged.

On Friday, California regulators shut down the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a top lender to venture capital firms and tech startups, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took it over, following a bank run by its customers. The bank reportedly did not have a chief risk officer in the months leading up to the collapse, while more than 90 percent of its deposits were not insured.

in 2015, SVB President Greg Becker submitted a statement to a Senate panel pushing legislators to exempt more banks — including his own — from new regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Despite warnings from some senators, Becker’s lobbying effort was ultimately successful.

Touting “SVB’s deep understanding of the markets it serves,our strong risk management practices,” Becker argued that his bank would soon reach $50 billion in assets, which under the law would trigger “enhanced prudential standards,” including more stringent regulations, stress tests, and capital requirements for his and other similarly sized banks.

Becker insisted that $250 billion was a more appropriate threshold.

“Without such changes, SVB likely will need to divert significant resources from providing financing to job-creating companies in the innovation economy to complying with enhanced prudential standards and other requirements,” wrote Becker, who**reportedly**sold $3.6 million of his own stock two weeks ago, in the lead-up to the bank’s collapse. “Given the low risk profile of our activities and business model, such a result would stifle our ability to provide credit to our clients without any meaningful corresponding reduction in risk.”

Two months later, SVB added former Obama Treasury Department official Mary Miller to its board, noting she had previously helped oversee “financial regulatory reforms.”

Around that time, federal disclosure records show the bank was lobbying lawmakers on “financial regulatory reform” and the Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act of 2015 — a bill that was the precursor to legislation ultimately signed by President Donald Trump that increased the regulatory threshold for stronger stress tests to $250 billion.

Trump signed the bill despite a report from Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee warning that under the new law, SVB and other banks of its size “would no longer be subject to nearly any enhanced regulations.”

The bill was supported in the Senate by 50 Republicans and 17 Democrats, including Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D), for whom Becker held a fundraiser at his Menlo Park, California, home in 2016, according to an invite obtained by The Sunlight Foundation and OpenSecrets. The bank’s political action committee also donated a total of $10,000 to Warner’s campaigns in the 2016 and 2018 election cycles.

In 2019, when the Federal Reserve proposed regulations implementing the deregulatory law, financial watchdogs warned that its regulations on Category IV institutions — as SVB was later classified due to its size and other risk factors — were far too weak.

“The proposal to significantly weaken enhanced prudential standards for Category IV firms could be disastrous,” Better Markets, a nonprofit advocating for stricter financial regulations, wrote in a comment on the Federal Reserve’s proposal. “Moreover, these are not small or insignificant firms. Recall that the smallest among this class of banks is over twice the size of the $50 billion dollar banks that automatically required enhanced prudential regulation under the Dodd-Frank Act as originally enacted.”

The final rule guaranteed that Category IV institutions are “not required to conduct and publicly report the results of a company-run stress test” and “reduces the required minimum frequency of liquidity stress tests and granularity of certain liquidity risk-management requirements,” according to Federal Reserve officials at the time.

In 2021, SVB passed the threshold of $100 billion under management, triggering some additional scrutiny as a Category IV bank but remaining exempt from the more frequent and detailed analyses that regulators perform to determine whether banks above $250 billion of assets have sufficient capital to withstand a crisis.

a press release Friday from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation noted that as of December 2022, SVB had $209 billion in assets under management — keeping it below the $250 billion threshold for which the bank had lobbied.

SVB is the biggest bank to collapse since Washington Mutual failed in 2008 during the financial crisis, and the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

Prior to Becker’s 2015 push, SVB had pressed Federal Reserve officials to limit regulatory scrutiny of mid-sized banks, arguing that “we are very concerned that the regulatory requirements for covered companies will end up trickling down to smaller financial institutions.”

In 2019, Becker was elected to serve on the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Becker left the board on Friday.

bloomberg

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he’s been in touch with the Biden administration and is hopeful that US officials will make an announcement on Sunday to address the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. }:

“Well, I have talked with the administration, from Jay Powell and Janet Yellen,” McCarthy said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They do have the tools to handle the current situation, they do know the seriousness of this and they are working to try to come forward with some announcement before the markets open.”

“I’m hopeful that something can be announced today to move forward,” the California Republican said. “Silicon Valley Bank has a lot of assets. It’s just where the capital is currently at. So it is attractive for someone to want to purchase it. It’s just the timeline of where to move forward.”

McCarthy didn’t specify the nature of any announcement that regulators might be preparing.

say it ain't so barney; mccarthy staffers lobby?

svb signature silvergate crypto fail

~ Eliz, manchin sinema trump regs water down fair to sm bank BS

https://www.alternet.org/dodd-frank/

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/15/congress-bank-lobbying/

lee fang

DURING THE STATE of the Union last week, President Joe Biden asked Congress to pass legislation cracking down on hidden and often predatory fees charged by banks in the form of overdraft and late penalties, adding heft to regulatory action launched by his administration last year.

But the legislation may not stand much of a chance with a Republican House, where the Financial Services Committee, which oversees banking policy, is now chaired by Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and staffed by former lobbyists.

Over the last few weeks, McHenry’s hires to run the committee are mostly former lobbyists who served the very banks, lenders, and brokerages seeking to combat Biden regulations. Staffers often play a pivotal role in determining the strategy and policy behind any change in the law.

larry Seyfried, just months ago, worked as a registered lobbyist and vice president of congressional relations at the American Bankers Association, the bank trade group that is leading the charge against Biden’s crackdown on junk fees. Seyfried was hired by McHenry as the director of member services and coalitions for the House Financial Services Committee.

The American Bankers Association, earlier this week threatened to file a lawsuit to stop the Biden administration from capping certain bank fees at $8 each, claiming such regulations would increase borrowing costs and force banks to cut services to certain types of customers.McHenry, in turn, has threatened to use his new perch on the committee to investigate the primary regulatory agencies charged with enforcing the fee mandate, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Several GOP lawmakers on the committee have proposed legislation to rein in the CFPB’s authority.

The committee also recently hired Will Anderson, a former lobbyist for the Business Roundtable, a trade group that represents Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and other large financial corporations. Anderson will serve as the staff director for the subcommittee on capital markets, which oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies.

Last year, disclosures show Anderson lobbied Congress and the SEC on behalf of the Business Roundtable on a variety of financial regulations. Now he will work from the inside.

Other committee staffers have similar potential conflicts of interest. Kathleen Palmer, a GOP congressional staffer for the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy, is a former lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase & Co. Matt Hoffmann, the staff director of the committee for McHenry, previously worked as a lobbyist for the BGR Group, a large firm with many clients with interests directly impacted by the committee, including Credit Suisse Group and MetLife.

The so-called reverse revolving door, in which lobbyists for highly regulated interest groups temporarily take jobs in government with influence or oversight over policy impacting their former employers, is a vexing issue.

As the Revolving Door Spins, Lobbyists Hired for Top Jobs in Congress Yet Again

Policymakers need expertise to devise thoughtful policy, and former lobbyists are often well equipped to understand highly technical issues for specialized industries. David Hanke, the recently hired director of the new select committee to probe competition between the U.S. and China, for instance, previously worked as an attorney advising on semiconductor issues, a key concern shaping U.S.-China tensions. He was also registered to lobby.

But the burrowing of corporate lobbyists deep inside powerful roles in the congressional and federal bureaucracy also presents the potential for entrenched corruption.

The advantages for burrowing are so high that many corporations with a stake in government policy write the incentives into employment contracts. Banks and defense contractors extend special bonuses as a reward for executives to leave and enter government. In public service, they are well positioned to reward their former corporate employers. After a stint in government, most return to the private sector.

For example, Northrop Grumman, the defense giant, paid out bonuses to executives who went on to work as congressional staff. One former Northrop Grumman lobbyist received up to $450,000 in bonus and incentive pay as he left the firm to work on the committee that oversees Pentagon policy. Former Northrop Grumman executives worked to advocate for higher military spending and for lawmakers who specifically encouraged spending on Northrop Grumman-built weapons systems, including the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone.

Newly hired congressional staff across the aisle present other potential conflicts of interest. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, recently announced the lead staffer on the committee will be Courtney Taylor, who previously worked as senior vice president at the lobbying firm ML Strategies. Disclosures show Taylor has previously lobbied for a range of clients, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Shell, and the American Wood Council, a trade group for the wood products industry.

In Congress, the most important staffer for each member is the chief of staff, who oversees each lawmaker’s operations. Tucker Knott, the new chief of staff to Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., previously worked as a lobbyist for Pfizer. Hank Dixon, the chief of staff to newly elected Rep. Sydney Kamlager, D-Calif., comes to the job after working as vice president of corporate affairs at oil firm Talisman Energy and before that, as a D.C. lawyer for Shell. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., recently hired Tim Costa as his chief of staff. Costa previously worked as a lobbyist at the firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC for several health care clients, including Walgreens.

As Truthout reported, several former fossil fuel lobbyists have been hired for key committees overseeing energy and land use policy. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., who controls the gavel of the Natural Resources Committee, hired a former lobbyist for Taylor Energy, the Louisiana firm responsible for an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., also a member of the same committee, hired Shawn Rusterholz, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for the oil majors such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp ]]

rev door 360?!

pension = rev dr lobby

two top environmental officials from the Trump administration are taking on new positions in Washington, it was announced Monday.

Andrew Wheeler, the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, is joining The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, as a visiting fellow.

David Bernhardt, the former Interior Secretary, is rejoining lobbying and law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, as senior counsel.

Spokesperson Lara Day said in an email that Bernhardt has “no intention” of lobbying the Interior Department or its agencies.

“David’s counsel, expertise and perspective will complement our teams and add immediate value to our clients,” Day said, adding that Monday was the Trump official’s first day on the job. “David will focus on big picture, strategic opportunities.”

Bernhardt’s page on the firm’s website says that he “assists client’s efforts to solve matters of federal administrative law,regulatory compliance, infrastructure siting, natural resources development, energy andgovernment investigations.”

The Heritage Foundation released a statement saying that Wheeler, in joining them as a visiting fellow, will advise on the economic and environmental impact of energy, climate change and environmental regulations.

“His service on Capitol Hill as well as in the private sector will help bolster our team’s expertise on a range of important policy issues. Andrew has proven in his career a commitment to protecting America’s natural resources while rejecting aggressive government regulation,” Heritage Foundation President Kay James said in a statement, referencing Wheeler’s prior employment, including his work for the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee.

While serving in the Trump administration, Wheeler :{spoke at some:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Heritage Foundation events.

“I am deeply honored to join this well-respected team as we work together to advance conservative values with policies that will benefit all Americans,” the former environment official said in a statement.

Both Bernhardt and Wheeler are also among the Trump administration officials who have recently joined former Vice President Mike Pence’s conservative political group.

TAGS ANDREW WHEELER ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA HERITAGE FOUNDATION INTERIOR DEPARTMENT MIKE PENCE TRUMP OFFICIALS

fake elector ron johnson mike kelly

kelly “recently touted the results of an ‘internal investigation’ that identified Matt Stroia, his chief of staff at the time, as the intermediary for the lists…. Kelly’s office…said Stroia, now a Pfizer lobbyist had a previous relationship with members of the Trump team”

an badash 2 23

The highly controversial and highly unpopular **U.S. Supreme Court** isn’t just facing a historic loss of confidence, it’s now facing yet another ethics scandal that is likely to lower even further public opinion of the far-right institution that in under two decades has seen its approval rating slashed.

Although it will not hear arguments, the issue before the Supreme Court and the American people’s view of it, is, should a justice’s spouse – in this case the spouse of Chief Justice John Roberts – be able to make millions of dollars recruiting attorneys who are placed into top law firms that argue cases before it?

That’s the latest allegation, and already a spokesperson for the Court has issued a statement denying any ethical violations.

The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicatingMrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court,according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”

Jane Sullivan Roberts left a law firm where she was a partner after her spouse was confirmed as Chief Justice.

“Mrs. Roberts, according to a 2015 deposition,” The Times reports, “said that a significant portion of her practice was devoted to helping senior government lawyers land jobs at law firms and that the candidates’ names were almost never disclosed.”

Documents in that case “list six-figure fees credited to Mrs. Roberts for placing partners at law firms — including $690,000 in 2012 for one such match. The documents do not name clients, but Mr. Price recalled her recruitment of one prominent candidate, Ken Salazar, then interior secretary under President Barack Obama, to WilmerHale,a global firm that boasts of arguing more than 125 times before the Supreme Court.”

That case involves “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts,” Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, who “has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice.”

“According to the letter,” sent by Price to DOJ and Congress, which the Times reports it obtained, “Mr. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, as well as Mrs. Roberts and another executive, over his dismissal.”

Doug Lindner, Advocacy Director for Judiciary & Democracy for the League of Conservation Voters remarked: “Another day, another ethics concern about another life-tenured conservative justice on the most powerful court in the world, which has no binding ethics rules.”

Indeed, the lack of a Supreme Court code of ethics has been repeatedly condemned for years, including by some of the nation’s top critics.

On Sept. 1, 2022, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin tweeted out her opinion piece: “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory .. just another insurrectionist.”

Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor for the Atlantic, responded:

“Another reminder of how unethical is Justice Clarence Thomas, while Chief Justice Roberts turns a blind eye and continues to resist a code of ethics for a Supreme Court now distrusted by a majority of Americans. This defines the Roberts Court.”

The following month Ornstein slammed the Roberts Court once again.

“It is a stain on the Supreme Court that Chief Justice Roberts refuses to support a Judicial Code of Ethics, and stands by silently while Clarence Thomas flouts ethical standards over and over and over,” Ornstein charged.

Less than one month later he again unleashed on Roberts.

“Roberts is culpable,” he tweeted. “He has resisted over and over applying the Judicial Code of Ethics to the Supreme Court. This is Alito’s court, and it is partisan and corrupt.”

Ornstein is far from the Court’s only critic.

“If Chief Justice Roberts really wanted to address Supreme Court ethics, he would have immediately worked to implement a Code of Conduct after Clarence Thomas failed to recuse from cases involving January 6th despite having a clear conflict of interest,” the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tweeted a year ago in May. The following month CREW published an analysis titled: “Chief Justice John Roberts is wrong: the American judicial system is facing a major ethics crisis.”

Meanwhile, in late November Politico reported that Democrats in Congress were outraged at the Roberts Court.

“Two senior Democrats in Congress are demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts detail what, if anything, the Supreme Court has done to respond to recent allegations of a leak of the outcome of a major case the high court considered several years ago,” PoliticoJosh Bernstein reported, referring to the leak of the Dobbs decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision – itself a massive ethics crisis for the Court.

“Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) are also interested in examining claims about a concerted effort by religious conservatives to woo the justices through meals and social engagements. They wrote to Roberts on Sunday, making clear that if the court won’t investigate the alleged ethical breaches, lawmakers are likely to launch their own probe.”

Whitehouse and Johnson “also criticized the high court’s response to a letter they sent Roberts in September, seeking information about the court’s reaction to reports in POLITICO and Rolling Stone about a yearslong campaign to encourage favorable decisions from the justices by bolstering their religiosity.”

Nothing has changed.

When the Roberts Court earlier this month announced its lengthy investigation did not find the draft Dobbs decision leaker but also did not include the Justices themselves, Stokes Prof. of Law at NYU Law School Melissa Murray, an MSNBC host, tweeted, “This is a Roberts Court leitmotif–The Chief loves to handle things–even big things–in-house. Ethics issues? No need to get involved, Congress. We’ll sort it out ourselves. Leak needs investigating? No need to call in an actual investigative body, the Marshal will handle it.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor, pointing to how the Justices were not thoroughly investigated during the leak probe, in earlier this month said: “Last week the court released statements that confirmed the gap between how the justices and everyone else were treated.”

“The whole situation amplifies a major question about the court: are these nine people, making decisions that affect all of us, accountable to anyone?”

trump baby jail?

Additionally, IRLI, FAIR’s legal arm, hired Tom Homan as a senior fellow. During the Trump administration, Homan served as the acting director of ICE from January 2017 to June 2018. Through their new roles, both Morgan and Homan have used media appearances to excoriate the Biden administration’s immigration policies, while lauding and promoting the preservation of Trump administration policies.

Across 2021, FAIR has focused its attention on increasing its influence on state and local public officials, particularly sheriffs.On June 25, 2021, FAIR organized a “Rally to End Biden’s Border Crisis,” at a segment of the U.S. border in Hereford, Arizona. The speakers at the event included Mark Morgan,Tom Homan, local sheriffs and Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. On April 8, 2021, FAIR promoted a letter signed by 275 sheriffs from across 39 states attacking the Biden Administration’s immigration strategy.The letter is filled with talking points routinely espoused by groups like FAIR.

https://grist.org/politics/more-hill-staff-go-on-to-lobby-for-the-oil-industry-because-this-is-how-politics-works/

no lnx

More Hill staff go on to lobby for the oil industry, because this is how politics works

Relationships are the name of the game. And Big Oil knows how to play the game.

Philip Bump

Jan 15, 2013

lend me a lobbyist

Here’s more of this nonsense. From The Hill:

The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) has hired a pair of House GOP staffers to promote oil-and-gas development in Western states and the Gulf of Mexico.

The industry lobbying group said Tuesday that it’s expanding its government affairs staff by adding Mallori McClure, who was an aide to Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), andSamantha McDonald, who worked for Rep. John Fleming (R-La.).

“Mallori’s and Samantha’s experience on Capitol Hill, both advising legislators who not only sat on the House Natural Resources Committee, but who represent important energy-producing states primes them perfectly to advocate for America’s independent oil and natural gas producers inside the Beltway,” saidIPAA President Barry Russell in a statement.

Bullshit. Mallori and Samantha’s relationships on Capitol Hill prime them perfectly to advocate for the industry with their friends and former associates.

A 2010 report found that three out of every four oil industry lobbyists had previously worked for the government.

Even considering the generally friendly relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill, the number of well-connected oil lobbyists is remarkable. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics calculates that fewer than one in three registered lobbyists in 2009 had revolving-door connections — less than half the oil industry rate found by The Post.

Officials with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that tracks Interior Department officials who cross over to the oil sector, said they were surprised by the findings. “With these numbers, you can see how the revolving door between the Hill and industry allowed problems in the agency to happen and not be addressed,” said Mandy Smithberger, an investigator for the group.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America is one of 195 organizations and companies lobbying on oil issues. The oil and gas industry employs 736 lobbyists. In 2012, those lobbyists have cost their clients $103 million. That is more than eight times the amount spent by environmental advocates in 2011.

And that explains that.

API

Bill Koetzle staffer rev dr hastert

Vice President

Federal Affairs

bill Koetzle serves as senior vice president of Government Affairs, leading advocacy efforts in Congress, the Administration and federal agencies on industry priority issues.

Before joining API, Koetzle spent a decade at Chevron, managing the company’s legislative, regulatory and political affairs, including the development of the company’s policy positions and advocacy strategy to achieve top priorities. While at Chevron, Koetzle spent time in Asia leading advocacy on Chevron’s tax and environmental priorities, managing government relations, internal and external communications, and community engagement activities in support of the company’s investments in six countries, including China and Thailand.

Prior to his time at Chevron, Koetzle spent a decade working in leadership and policy development roles in the House of Representatives, including as Deputy Republican Staff Director for the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Assistant to the Speaker for Policy and Illinois Director, and Legislative Director for Representative Dennis Hastert (R–Ill.) beginning in 1998. During his time in Congress, Koetzle managed the congressional and district offices for the Representative-turned-Speaker of the House, as well as constituent services and appropriations and was the primary advisor to Speaker Hastert on energy, environment, telecommunications, natural resources and agricultural issues. Koetzle later served as the Senior Vice President for Public Policy at the Institute for Energy Research, a non-profit organization that conducts research and analysis on impacts to global energy markets.

Koetzle graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Irvine. He went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. in political science, also from the University of California at Irvine. Koetzle and his family reside in northern Virginia.

https://bradblog.com/?p=14119 podcast

JEFF HAUSER, director of The Revolving Door Project, who scrutinizes the executive branch appointments.

omg

VA's Republican Gov.-Elect Youngkin taps Trump's EPA chief:
- **VA Governor-Elect Taps Trump EPA Chief For Key Post** (E&E News)
- **Youngkin nominates Trump EPA chief Andrew Wheeler for secretary of natural resources** (Washington Post/MSN):

Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday nominated Andrew Wheeler a former coal lobbyist who led a rollback of Obama-era environmental regulations as President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency chief ” as his secretary of natural resources.

- **Trump EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler Tapped For Virginia's Top Environmental Post** (Huffington Post/Yahoo News)

New solar plants planned for Virginia's former coal fields:

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/joe-manchin-2655486530/

no lnx

Joe Manchin’s former aides are lobbying Congress for oil, gas, tobacco and pharma companies

Meaghan Ellis November 03, 2021

As Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) works tirelessly to roll back President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda, several of his former aides are lobbying Congress on behalf of their corporate clients.

According to CNBC, dozens of filings to Congress indicate "at least six former aides and advisors lobbying members of Congress, including senators, for power players in industries such as coal, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, tobacco, and finance, according to more than two dozen filings to Congress."

CNBC highlighted the current work of Jonathan Kott, Manchin's former senior advisor who now works for Capitol Counsel and is lobbying for ExxonMobil.

"Kott, Manchin's senior advisor, and communications director for seven years, now works for lobbying giant Capitol Counsel.Kott started lobbying for gas giant ExxonMobil in the third quarter after he was hired by Capitol Counsel in June 2021, according to lobbying disclosures.

"Kott and his colleagues at the firm were paid $10,000 by Exxon to lobby the House and Senate, which included activities such as 'monitoring legislation impacting energy development and production" and lobbying on 'issues related to tax reform, energy taxes and taxation of U.S. multinational corporations.'"

Third-quarter lobbying disclosures also indicate that Kott received a total of $50,000 from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers.Per the company's website, they are described as "a trade association 'representing the makers of the fuels that keep Americans moving and the petrochemicals that are the essential building blocks for modern life.'"

The group's board consists of high-ranking representatives from some of the country's largest oil and gas corporations, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Badische Anilin- und SodaFabrik (BASF), and Dow Chemicals, Inc.

Patrick Hayes, Manchin's former chief of staff and current partner at Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid, has been lobbying Congress for "mix of clean energy companies and the Industrial Minerals Association, which according to its website is a 'premier trade association representing the interests of North American companies that mine or process the industrial minerals.'"

Read the full report at CNBC.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Manchin threatening key climate provision - Alternet.org ›

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Schlapp, Mercedes	Donald J Trump for President
Cekuta, Margaret	Capitol Counsel
Bailey, Kevin	Glover Park Group
Smith, Keith	National Assn of Manufacturers
Popp, Monica	Marshall & Popp

2019-	Donald J Trump for President Revolving Door Personnel: (35)
2017-2019	White House Revolving Door Personnel: (756)	Director of Strategic Communications	Agency lobbying profile
2004-2004	George W Bush for President Revolving Door Personnel: (3)
2000-2000	George W Bush for President Revolving Door Personnel: (3)
	White House Revolving Door Personnel: (756)	Director of Specialty Media	Agency lobbying profile
	Cove Strategies Revolving Door Personnel: (5)	Cove Strategies Revolving Door Personnel: (5)	Cove Strategies Revolving Door Personnel: (5)

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2019/04/24/former-lawmakers-who-left-office-in-january-already-lobbying-428334

former lawmakers who left office in January already lobbying

By THEODORIC MEYER

04/24/2019 02:18 PM EDT

With David Beavers, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Lippman

FORMER LAWMAKERS WHO LEFT OFFICE IN JANUARY ALREADY LOBBYING:Two lawmakers who left Congress in January and headed to K Street are already lobbying, according to disclosure filings. Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who’s now at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, lobbied on Polish-American relations for MDIF Media Partners I, a New York investment fund in the first quarter. She also lobbied for Cermar Investments LLC on an expropriation settlement with the Honduran government that Oscar Cerna, an American businessman, has spent years fighting for.

Former Rep.Lamar Smith(R-Texas), meanwhile, who also joined Akin Gump after leaving Congress in January, reported lobbying for four clients. They include HerdX, a ranching logistics company; Otis Eastern Service, an oil-and-gas pipeline company; Pebble Limited Partnership, which is trying to develop an open-pit mine in Alaska; and Pfizer, the giant pharmaceutical company.

— While former senators are banned from lobbying Congress for two years, and former representatives are banned for a year, they’re allowed to lobby the administration immediately. Ros-Lehtinen lobbied the Executive Office of the President and the State Department, according to an Akin Gump spokesperson. Smith lobbied the White House, the Agriculture Department, the Energy Department, the Commerce Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Executive Office of the President, the National Economic Council, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget.

— Other former lawmakers who’ve headed to K Street since leaving office didn’t report lobbying in the first quarter. They include former Sens. Jon Kyl R-Ariz.) and Joe Donnelly(D-Ind.), and former Reps. Luke Messer(R-Ind.), Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), Bill Shuster(R-Pa.), Dave Reichert(R-Wash.), Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) and Barbara Comstock(R-Va.). Former Reps. Lynn Jenkins(R-Kan.), Ryan Costello (R-Pa.) andFrank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), who’ve started their own consulting firms, haven’t registered to lobby, either. Some former lawmakers, including LoBiondo, Costello and Rooney, have said they don’t plan to do work that would require them to register as lobbyists....

pension plan / crony capitaLISM

Rick Perry Rejoins Pipeline Company Energy Transfer’s Board of Directors

interesting pension plan case; in gov't only military revered; this guy capitalizes on a fail; greens are the enemy?!

The industry is gearing up for the fight of its life, which may explain why an expert in actual warfare gave the keynote at the plastics conference.

In 2000, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold guided his crew through a terrorist attack on the USS Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed and 39 injured. Now a crisis management consultant, Lippold told the audience at the Plastics Industry Association meeting a grueling story of mass casualties, near-death experiences, and a shrapnel-filled vessel taking on water. His tale, which ended with Lippold piloting his hobbled ship back into the open seas with the national anthem blaring, suggested that with enough fierce determination, the plastics executives too might be able to sail past the threats facing them.

dupont

Here are a few of the recent appointments:

Lynn DeKleva, who worked for decades at chemical giant DuPont, was appointed to a job as an environmental engineer in the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety and pollution prevention office in October. Typically, environmental engineering positions are not political appointments. DeKleva did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comments. The EPA said in a statement that DeKleva “brings considerable product stewardship experience and knowledge with her to assist” the agency.

https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/lynn-dekleva

main is congress to k street lobby?

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/10/congress-to-k-street-176-members

congress to K Street: 176 members left for influence gigs over last decade

Over the last decade, at least 176 members of Congress joined the influence industry. A majority of those former lawmakers took their talents to K Street lobbying firms or major law firms that engage in federal lobbying work. Read More

Over the last decade, at least 176 members of Congress joined the influence industry, according to a new report from OpenSecrets that focuses on “shadow lobbying” and the revolving door.

Leaving Congress for lobbying or consulting work is bipartisan. Since the 111th Congress, which ended in January 2011, 94 Republicans took a spin through the revolving door as did 81 Democrats.

A whopping 26 of the 29 members of last Congress to join the influence industry were Republicans — a lopsided number driven by a wave of Republican retirements ahead of House Democrats’ sweeping win in November. The reverse happened during the red wave in 2010, when 40 of the 56 members who went through the revolving door were Democrats.

A majority of the former members took their talents to K Street lobbying firms or major law firms that engage in federal lobbying work.

Powerhouse lobbying firms Squire Patton Boggs and Akin, Gump are the top collectors of congressional talent, taking in five former members each since the 111th Congress. To kick off 2019, Squire Patton Boggs hired former Reps. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), who retired at session’s end, and Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), the fourth-ranking Democrat who lost in a primary upset to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The firm also retains former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as an unregistered adviser.

DLA Piper, Venable, Cannae Policy Group, Greenberg Traurig and King & Spalding each hired four members of Congress each over the same time period.

High-ranking members of Congress have no trouble finding high-paying jobs where they can leverage their extensive experience and connections.

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) received a seven-figure job at financial firm Moelis & Company, which advises corporations on strategic decisions. Former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) worked as an adviser for Gephardt Group after retiring from Congress in 2011. Former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who read talking points from Saudi Arabia on the House floor, became policy director for Brownstein, Hyatt, which lobbies for the Middle Eastern country.

None of those three representatives registered as lobbyists for their new gigs. But OpenSecrets’ analysis found that representatives on average are more likely to register as lobbyists than senators. Forty percent of senators joining the influence industry registered to lobby compared to 55 percent of representatives.

The revolving door is nothing new, but an increasing number of lawmakers are trying to shut it through new policies, including Democratic presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Warren’s plan bans presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress, federal judges and cabinet secretaries from ever becoming lobbyists and limits other federal employees. It also attempts to expand the definition of a lobbyist to any individual paid to influence government.

This week, Sanders released his plan to stop Washington corruption, which includes a ban on lobbying from former members of Congress and their senior staffers.

“Congress cannot represent their constituents while special interest groups have the ability to influence decisions with corner offices and lucrative job offers,” Sanders said in a press release.

Lobbying experts say a ban on lobbying for former members — unlikely to pass Congress and survive the courts as it is — would actually encourage “shadow lobbying” if lobbying disclosure laws are not made more rigorous.

:{Click here:(style="box-sizing:inherit;max-height:1e+06px"):}: to explore a searchable list of revolving door members.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/former-lawmakers-using-campaign-donation-slush-funds-to-lobby-current-members/

no lnx

Former lawmakers using campaign donation ‘slush funds’ to lobby current members

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon July 29, 2019

Former members of Congress are using the leftover money in their old campaign committees to funnel campaign donations to lawmakers they lobby on behalf of foreign clients.

At least 17 former members of Congress who are registered as agents of foreign governments have kept their campaign committees active since leaving Capitol Hill. At least nine of them have used those committees to funnel their supporters’ contributions to lawmakers whom they have lobbied on behalf of foreign governments, according to an investigation by the Campaign Legal Center, the Center for Responsive Politics and The Daily Beast.

Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who served 12 terms in the House and is now a lobbyist on behalf the government of Qatar (along with other clients), spent much of last summer lobbying members of Congress to pressure Saudi Arabia to ease travel restrictions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Moran convinced Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., to send a letter to the Saudi ambassador about the issue. Crist obliged, including portions of Moran’s suggested text verbatim, and Moran then used his still-active campaign committee to donate $1,000 to Crist’s campaign.

Moran similarly donated $500 from his campaign committee to Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., on the same day that he asked him to send the same type of letter. Ruppersberger obliged, also lifting portions of Moran’s suggested text verbatim.

Moran also donated $1,000 from his campaign committee to Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., while urging him to send a similar letter. Menendez does not appear to have done so. Moran pitched at least six members of Congress on the letter.

Moran had never previously donated to any of the members of Congress detailed in the report before lobbying them on behalf of Qatar.

“Examples like these,” the Campaign Legal Center said in its report, “add another dimension to the familiar but ever-expanding story of money, influence, and access in Washington.”

“The Congressional revolving door and cash-for-access systems become even more concerning when politicians-turned-lobbyists use leftover campaign funds to promote the interests of foreign governments — not to mention their own lobbying careers,” the report said.

Moran was joined at the firm McDermott Will & Emery by former Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who also signed on to lobby for Qatar. Early last year, Miller made two $1,000 donations to Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., from Miller’s still-active campaign committee. This came after Miller had lobbied Wilson, who sits on a congressional subcommittee that deals with Qatar, to meet with Qatar’s finance minister.

As with Moran and his lobbying targets, Miller had never previously donated to Wilson’s campaigns.

Former Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., used a similar tactic to lobby on behalf of Saudi Arabia. McKeon made four $1,000 donations from his still-active campaign committee to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, while lobbying him on a Senate bill that would have rolled back support for the Saudi-led combat operation in Yemen.

McKeon also donated $1,000 to Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, just before Blunt’s committee killed an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would have stopped U.S. support for the Saudi military campaign in Yemen.

McKeon similarly donated $2,000 from his campaign committee to Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., at that time chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, less than two weeks after introducing Royce to another of his foreign clients. (Royce himself did not run for re-election in 2018.)

McKeon had never donated to Inhofe, Blunt or Royce before lobbying them on behalf of foreign clients. McKeon, Moran and Miller, who make up just a third of former lawmakers engaged in the practice, denied any wrongdoing.

The Federal Election Commission does not have clear rules about how leftover campaign funds may be used after a lawmaker leaves office. The Campaign Legal Center urged the agency to crack down on the scourge of what it called “zombie-campaigns.”

“Many former members appear to have treated their old campaign accounts as slush funds,” the group said. “The examples in this report … underscore why the FEC should issue clear rules for so-called ‘zombie campaigns’ — both to lay out permissible uses for campaign funds once members leave office, and to prevent former officeholders from keeping their dormant campaign committees open indefinitely.”

The use of these “zombie campaigns” was also highlighted in a 2018 Tampa Bay Times investigation, which found that retired lawmakers were spending campaign funds “to finance their lifestyles, advance new careers and pay family members.”

“Their spending makes a mockery of one of the fundamental principles of America’s campaign finance laws: Donations must be spent only on politics, not politicians’ personal lives,” the report said.

The Campaign Legal Center warned that the lack of rules regarding leftover campaign funds means that the problem will only get worse if regulators or Congress do not act.

“As former members get farther and farther from their time in public office, the universe of plausible officeholder-related expenses shrinks ever smaller, so keeping campaigns open for years can invite abuse,” the group said. “Such steps could go a long way toward curbing the abuses documented in this report, and they could also help chip away at the broader systems of money, access, and influence that helps abuses like these thrive.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/07/22/comprehensive-review-revolving-door-between-fox-and-trump-administration/224292

Note: This post reworks and adds to our previous report, :{“A comprehensive list of former Fox employees who have joined the Trump administration.”:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;text-decoration-skip-ink:none"):}: It will be updated as additional former Fox employees join or leave the Trump administration, and as former Trump administration officials are hired by Fox or its parent company

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented relationship with Fox News has created a revolving door between the network and the White House.

Trump has stocked his administration with former Fox employees. Cabinet secretaries overseeing federal departments, senior White House aides advising the president on crucial issues, and U.S. ambassadors representing the country abroad, among others, all worked for the network before joining Trump’s administration. Those are just the ones who actually made the jump to the Trump administration -- several other current or former Fox employees have been connected to various administration jobs but have not received them.

Meanwhile, several former senior members of the Trump administration have joined Fox or its parent company, either in top executive roles or as on-air commentators.

Nine current Trump administration officials previously worked at Fox as of July 22, while eight more officials worked at Fox before joining the administration but have since left. Five former Trump administration officials subsequently took jobs at the network or its parent company after leaving government.

Current Trump administration officials who used to work at Fox

Former Trump administration officials who used to work at Fox

Current Fox employees who used to work in the Trump administration

While Fox has long served as a comfortable landing spot for Republicans between stints in politics or government, these hires are happening within the context of the network fusing with Trump’s administration. The president’s worldview is shaped by the hours of Fox programming he watches each day -- both his public statements and his major decisions often coming in response to what he sees -- leading him to treat Fox employment as an important credential in hiring.

At the same time, prior employment in the Trump administration is apparently valued by Fox founder Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, whose media empire benefited greatly after becoming a pro-Trump propaganda outlet.

Trump’s affinity for staff with a Fox pedigree extends outside the administration. He hired Jay Sekulow to join his legal team because the president liked the way Sekulow defended him on Fox, and he nearly added the similarly credentialed Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing to the group as well. Then there’s Kimberly Guilfoyle, who left her job co-hosting a Fox show and became the vice chairwoman of a pro-Trump super PAC the next week (she is also dating Donald Trump Jr.).

Trump also consults with a “Fox News Cabinet” of current network employees.He reportedly speaks frequently with Rupert Murdoch. And Fox hosts including Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson, and Pete Hegseth all reportedly influence Trump not only through their programs, but advise him privately as well.

Current Trump administration officials who used to work at Fox

Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development. Carson, formerly a prominent neurosurgeon, became a right-wing media sensation after using a February 2013 speech in front of President Barack Obama to trumpet conservative economics and health care arguments. He joined Fox News as a contributor in October 2013 and left just over a year later to run for president. After Trump’s election, Carson joined his administration as the secretary of housing and urban development. His tenure has been dogged by scandals involving lavish spending for office furniture and other ethics issues, as well as a general failure to carry out his department’s mission.

Elaine Chao, secretary of transportation. After a career in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors capped by serving as labor secretary in President George W. Bush’s Cabinet, Chao became a Fox News contributor. She left the network in 2012 and took a seat on the board of directors of News Corp., at the time Fox’s parent company. In 2016, she stepped down from the board after Trump nominated her as secretary of transportation. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY); former Fox News contributor Erick Erickson has alleged that he was taken off the air because of his criticism of McConnell at Chao’s behest.

John Bolton, national security adviser. Long recognized as one of the most hawkish members of the foreign policy community, Bolton served in the Bush State Department and as ambassador to the United Nations. He joined Fox as a contributor in 2006 and became the network’s go-to voice for national security stories for the next decade, using the platformto push for military options in North Korea and Iran. Those appearances caught the attention of Trump, who said during a 2015 interview, “I watch the shows” for military advice, and that he liked Bolton because “he’s a tough cookie, knows what he’s talking about.” In March 2018, Trump named Bolton as his national security adviser.

Scott Brown, ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Glowing Fox News coverage helped power Brownto victory in his 2010 run for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. After losing his reelection bid two years later, he joined the network as a contributor, using it as a platform to burnish his profile over the next year while exploring a run for Senate in New Hampshire. He left the network, lost that 2014 race despite the network’s efforts to promote him, and was rehired two weeks later. After Brown endorsed Trump in February 2016, Fox hosts began promoting him for the vice president slot. In August 2016, former Fox host Andrea Tantaros named him in the sexual harassment lawsuit she filed against Fox and several network executives. Trump nonetheless nominated Brown to be ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa in April 2017, and he was confirmed that June. He subsequently faced a State Department inquiry after making inappropriate comments to a female server at an official event.

Georgette Mosbacher, ambassador to Poland. Mosbacher, a Republican businesswoman and donor, longtime Trump friend, and a Fox News contributor, was nominated to be ambassador to Poland in February 2018 and confirmed by the Senate that July.

Richard Grenell, ambassador to Germany. Grenell, a Republican communications professional who spent seven years as spokesperson for the U.S. delegation to the U.N., joined Fox News as a contributor in 2009 and was still in the network’s employ when he was nominated to be ambassador to Germany in September 2017. He was confirmed in April 2018 “despite objections from Democrats that his past epithets about prominent female politicians made him unfit for the job.”

Morgan Ortagus, State Department spokesperson. After working in the Bush and Obama administrations, Ortagus became a Fox contributor, then was named State Department spokesperson in April.

Lea Gabrielle, State Department special envoy. In February, the State Department named Gabrielle, a former Fox News reporter, as special envoy and coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, an agency that counters foreign propaganda and disinformation.

Monica Crowley, Treasury Department assistant secretary for public affairs. A C-list conservative commentator who spent two decades as a Fox contributor, Crowley was a reliable source of the network’s typical combination of bigotry, right-wing talking points, and attacks on the press. Most notably, she pushed several bigoted conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama’s heritage, including promoting a documentary about his purported “real father.” Trump’s plan to name her to a top National Security Council post was scuttled by revelations that she had plagiarized parts of her 2012 book and Ph.D. thesis, but she was appointed to the Treasury position in July 2019.

Former Trump administration officials who used to work at Fox

Bill Shine, White House communications director. Shine, a close friend of Hannity’s who once produced his show, rose through the executive ranks at Fox News, eventually becoming network founder Roger Ailes’ right-hand man and then Fox co-president. Shine resigned from Fox in May 2017 after his reported role helping to cover up the network’s culture of sexual harassment became too embarrassing, but he landed a plum White House job as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for communications. Shine left the White House for a role on Trump’s reelection campaign in March 2019. His exit reportedly came in part because Trump “feels he was sold a bill of goods by Hannity,” who had urged the president to hire Shine to improve his press coverage.

Heather Nauert, acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Nauert worked at Fox from 1998-2005 and 2007-2017 in a variety of roles. In April 2017, she left her position reading headlines as a news anchor on Fox & Friends, the morning program the president watches religiously, to become spokesperson for the State Department. In March 2018, she was named acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, replacing an official close to Rex Tillerson, who had just been ousted as secretary of state. She was nominated as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in December 2018, triggering stories about her lack of qualifications for the role outside of her Fox News connection. She withdrew from consideration for the post and left the administration in February, reportedly because her nomination was complicated by the fact she had “employed a nanny who was in the United States legally but was not legally allowed to work.”

Anthony Scaramucci, White House communications director. Scaramucci, a hedge fund mogul and a former Fox Business contributor and host, spent 10 days as White House communications director before his proclivity for giving expletive-laced interviews and publicly feuding with other White House staffers triggered his removal.

K.T. McFarland, deputy national security adviser. After serving in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations and losing a race against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), McFarland became a Fox national security analyst. She used that position to push for war with Iran, defend the use of torture, and push for the profiling of Muslim Americans. In November 2016, Trump picked her to be deputy national security adviser under Michael Flynn. She served only briefly in that position. Flynn was replaced by H.R. McMaster in February 2017 following the revelation that Flynn had lied to the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about whether he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition. McFarland was subsequently offered other opportunities in the administration and nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Singapore, but the nomination stalled over her connection to the Russia investigations -- she had reportedly been in contact with Flynn during his conversations with the Russian ambassador -- and she withdrew in February 2018.

Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president. A bombastic, self-proclaimed national security “expert” with dubious credentials, a proclivity for anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, and ties to foreign extremist groups, Gorka made frequent appearances on Fox News during the 2016 presidential campaign and was briefly hired by the network before decamping for the Trump White House. His job was ill-defined, and he apparently did little other than go on television to support the president before he was canned in August 2017. He then returned to Fox News as a full-fledged contributor, albeit one who was reportedly banned from appearing on the network’s “hard news” programming. In March, he left Fox for Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose stations now broadcast his bigotry around the country.

John McEntee, personal aide to the president. Fox hired McEntee as a production assistant in 2015. He later served as Trump’s personal aide both during the presidential campaign and in the White House. When McEntee was fired in March 2018, CNN reported that it was “because he is currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes.”

Tony Sayegh, Treasury Department assistant secretary for public affairs. Sayegh, a former Republican communications consultant and Fox contributor, served as the top spokesperson for the Treasury Department from April 2017 to June 2019.

Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications. Before joining the White House in September 2017, Schlapp was a Republican political consultant and a Fox News contributor. In July 2019, she left the White House for Trump’s reelection campaign.

Current Fox employees who used to work in the Trump administration

Hope Hicks, executive vice president and chief communications officer at Fox Corporation. Hicks, who first entered Trump’s orbit as a public relations flack working on Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, is reportedly one of Trump’s close confidates. In January 2015, a few months after she joined the Trump Organization, Donald Trump selected her to be press secretary on his 2016 campaign, one of its earliest hires. After Trump’s election, she served as White House communications director and was promoted to director of strategic communications. Hicks left the White House in April 2018. That October, she was announced as executive vice president and chief communications officer of what became Fox Corporation, Fox News’ parent company.

Raj Shah, senior vice president at Fox Corporation. A former Republican political operative and a senior aide at the Republican National Committee, Shah served as White House principal deputy press secretary before leaving the administration in January 2019. In July 2019, CNN and *The Washington Post* reported he had joined Fox Corporation as a senior vice president.

Abigail Slater, senior vice president for policy and strategy at Fox Corporation. Slater, an attorney who specializes in technology issues, worked for the Federal Trade Commission and a trade association for internet companies before joining the White House in February 2018 as special assistant to the president for technology, telecommunications and cybersecurity. In April 2019, she left the administration to lead Fox Corporation’s federal policy team.

David Bossie, Fox News contributor. A right-wing operative who has a history of employing dirty tricks and smears, Bossie was Trump’s deputy campaign manager in 2016. Fox News hired him as an on-air contributor in February 2017, even though he is reportedly bound by a non-disparagement agreement that prohibits him from publicly criticizing Trump. Indeed, Bossie has used his Fox platform to offer boilerplate defenses of Trump. In December 2018, as Fox personalities recommended him to replace White House chief of staff John Kelly, Bossie made an on-air pitch for the post on Fox & Friends.

Tom Homan, Fox News contributor. Homan served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 2017 until his retirement in June 2018, using that post to promote the president’s inhumane policies while spreading fear of and among immigrants, often on Fox. Homan joined the network as a contributor in August 2018. As a Fox employee, he staunchly supported the president’s immigration policies and statements and called for draconian responses to the purported migrant “invasion.” During a June 2019 Fox interview, Trump announced that he had hired Homan for a “border czar” position in the White House -- to the visible shock of the interviewers -- but Homan subsequently said that he had considered taking such a position but had not done so.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/merger-mania-the-military-industrial-complex-is-on-steroids/

hartung cmn dreams

When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to $50 billion in government contracts, a sum larger than the operating budget of the State Department. And now it’s about to have company.

Raytheon, already one of the top five U.S. defense contractors, is planning to merge with United Technologies. That company is a major contractor in its own right, producing, among other things, the engine for the F-35 combat aircraft, the most expensive Pentagon weapons program ever. The new firm will be second only to Lockheed Martin when it comes to consuming your tax dollars — and it may end up even more powerful politically, thanks to President Trump’s fondness for hiring arms industry executives to run the national security state.

Just as Boeing benefited from its former Senior Vice President Patrick Shanahan’s stint as acting secretary of defense, so Raytheon is likely to cash in on the nomination of its former top lobbyist, Mike Esper, as his successor. Esper’s elevation comes shortly after another former Raytheon lobbyist, Charles Faulkner, left the State Department amid charges that he had improperly influenced decisions to sell Raytheon-produced guided bombs to Saudi Arabia for its brutal air war in Yemen. John Rood, third-in-charge at the Pentagon, hasworked for both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, while Ryan McCarthy, Mike Esper’s replacement as secretary of the Army, worked for Lockheed on the F-35, which the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has determined may never be ready for combat.

And so it goes. There was a time when Donald Trump was enamored of “his” generals — Secretary of Defense James Mattis (a former board member of the weapons-maker General Dynamics), National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Now, he seems to have a crush on personnel from the industrial side of the military-industrial complex.

As POGO’s research has demonstrated, the infamous “revolving door” that deposits defense executives like Esper in top national security posts swings both ways. The group estimates that, in 2018 alone, 645 senior government officials — mostly from the Pentagon, the uniformed military, and Capitol Hill — went to work as executives, consultants, or board members of one of the top 20 defense contractors.

Fifty years ago, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire identified the problem when he noted that:

“the movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military-industrial complex in operation. It is a real threat to the public interest because it increases the chances of abuse… How hard a bargain will officers involved in procurement planning or specifications drive when they are one or two years away from retirement and have the example to look at of over 2,000 fellow officers doing well on the outside after retirement?”

In other words, that revolving door and the problems that go with it are anything but new. Right now, however, it seems to be spinning faster than ever — and mergers like the Raytheon-United Technologies one are only likely to feed the phenomenon.

The Last Supper

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/warren-calls-for-immediate-resignation-of-trumps-former-fda-chief-after-he-quietly-joins-pfizer-board/

**Warren calls for immediate resignation of Trump’s former FDA chief after he quietly joins Pfizer board**Ma:{ybe **Scott Gottlieb** thought he could avoid scrutiny by making the move to the board of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer just over two months after leaving his position as President Donald Trump’s commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—but if so, he didn’t count on Sen. Elizabeth Warren.:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts who is also running for her party’s nomination for president in 2020, released a letter (pdf) Tuesday morning calling on Gottlieb to step down from the board in the name of government ethics.

"You will be on the board of a company that has billions of dollars at stake in the decisions made by the agency you used to head and the employees you used to lead,” states Warren’s letter.

It’s a profitable venture for Gottlieb.

“According to Pfizer,” Warren notes, “board members in 2018 were paid $142,500 in cash retainers, plus received $192,500 worth of Pfizer stock.”

00:0200:33

Appointed by Trump, Gottlieb was the head of the FDA from 2017 until he resigned on April 5 of this year. After leaving the government, he took a job with right-wing think tank The American Enterprise Institute. The move to Pfizer, however, came later and was only announced on June 27.

In Warren’s letter, which Common Dreams obtained exclusively and is reproduced below, the senator refers favorably to Gottlieb’s work with the FDA before hitting him on joining Pfizer and tying that move to the behavior of other officials in President Donald Trump’s White House who have left the administration for big money payouts.

“You are the second high-level Trump Administration official in less than two months to join the board of a corporation soon after leaving government service,” reads the letter. “In May 2019, former Trump Administration DHS Secretary and Chief of Staff John Kelly joined the board of Caliburn, Inc., the parent company of the Comprehensive Health Services, which runs the notorious Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Florida.”

“You should rectify your mistake and immediately resign from your position as a Pfizer board member,” Warren adds.

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Warren’s letter cites her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act as a possible solution to government officials behaving in this way in the future. As Common Dreamsreported in June, Warren and the legislation’s sponsor in the House, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), see the problem as systemic to Washington’s public-private revolving door. Rep. John Sabarnes (D-Md.) is co-sponsoring Jayapal’s version of the law.

Gottlieb’s move to Pfizer was also noticed by Public Citizen Health Research Group co-founder Sidney Wolfe.

“This is classic and it’s not surprising,” Wolfe told health news site Stat. “Philosophically, he’s returning to the ecosystem where he’s most comfortable. And he’ll get paid very well for it, too.”

Read Warren’s letter:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s… by on Scribd

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-department-jedi-contract/

:{Amazon Offered Job to Pentagon Official Involved With $10 Billion Contract It Sought:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:inline !important"):}:

Alex Emmons

WH --> duke

PEOPLE

White House energy aide lands on K Street

Robin Bravender, E&E News reporter

Climatewire: Thursday, November 29, 2018

A veteran White House energy and environment official has left the administration for a lobbying gig.

Aaron Szabo, who worked on climate and energy policies in the Trump and Obama administrations, started this week at CGCN Group.

He'll be lobbying primarily on energy issues, according to CGCN spokesman Ken Spain. The group's clients include the American Petroleum Institute, Duke Energy Corp., TransCanada Corp., the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Devon Energy Corp., and NextEra Energy Inc.

Aaron Szabo. Photo credit: CGCN Group

Former White House aide Aaron Szabo. CGCN Group

"Aaron is one of the most experienced energy policy experts in D.C.," said Steve Clark, founder of CGCN. "We are proud to welcome him to the team after a decade of working on some of the biggest energy and environmental issues for both the Obama and Trump administrations."

Szabo was a career staffer in the White House from 2014 until he stepped down last week, according to his LinkedIn profile. He worked in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2014 until 2017, when he became an attorney at the Council on Environmental Quality.

His exit is "a big loss for the administration," said George David Banks, a former Trump White House official who focused on international energy policy. "He's an A player and he did a phenomenal job in helping promote the president's regulatory rollback policies."

Szabo worked closely in the White House with Mike Catanzaro, Trump's top domestic energy official who returned to CGCN in April, according to Banks.

"I tried to poach him and move him over to international because he's that good, and Mike put an end to that," joked Banks, who left the White House in February.

Szabo worked on the Obama administration's climate rules before he helped to overhaul them under Trump.

For example, he worked on Obama's Clean Power Plan before he assisted with the Trump team's proposed replacement, named the Affordable Clean Energy rule. He also worked on methane regulations for both administrations.

Prior to his time at the White House, Szabo spent nearly seven years as an analyst at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

CGCN's energy team includes Jay Cranford, a former policy adviser to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Mike Freeman, a former lawyer for the House Natural Resources Committee. Rosemarie Calabro Tully, former spokeswoman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's top Democrat, Maria Cantwell of Washington, joined CGCN earlier this year.

gunaserka & Downey Magallanes, the former deputy chief of staff to former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, left the department in August 2018 to work for the oil giant BP. Vincent DeVito, an energy advisor to Zinke, similarly left to join an oil and gas firm working in the Gulf of Mexico.

Limited the DOJ’s power to bring charges against corporations that defraud the government. Former Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand instructed DOJ lawyers to stop citing noncompliance with “guidance documents” as evidence that a violation has been committed. Guidance documents are interpretations of regulations that federal agencies provide to the industries they oversee to facilitate compliance. This change severely restricts the DOJ’s power to bring cases against corporations, especially for False Claims Act violations of defrauding the government. Brand’s former employer, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, celebrated the policy memo. Brand resigned shortly after releasing the memo to take the top legal post at Walmart.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/07/revolving-door-update-trump-administration

Andrew Wheeler’s rise to acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency is only the latest case of a former lobbyist finding an influential role within the Trump administration.

In January 2017, Trump signed anexecutive order banning former lobbyists from participating in matters in which they had previously lobbied for two years and placing a five-year ban on former Trump appointees lobbying after leaving the administration.

Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist who was confirmed as the EPA’s deputy administrator in April, is one of 164 former lobbyists currently serving in his administration, according to alist of current and former lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration recently published by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The searchable database includes the current Trump staffers and 18 former staffers now working as lobbyists. Thepage includes the names of staffers, their current or former positions and their most recent private-sector employer.

Each of the “revolving door” lobbyists has a link to their profile page, which shows their annual activity on behalf of organizations, policy issues and bills.

The data show former lobbyists in various roles throughout the federal bureaucracy and often working for agencies they once lobbied, which appears counter to the spirit of Trump’s edict.

Current staffers include a former lobbyist and lawyer with the American Petroleum Institute at the EPA (Erik Baptist), a National Rifle Association lobbyist in the Interior Department (Ben Cassidy) and an American Airlines lobbyist leading the Federal Aviation Administration (Dan Elwell).

Lobbyists currently hold appointed positions at over 40 different federal agencies and departments, including chiefs of staff roles at the Department of Homeland Security (Chad Wolf) and Office of Management and Budget (Emma King Doyle).

Seventeen former lobbyists hold positions at Health and Human Services,the most among federal departments.Eleven are serving at the EPA, including Wheeler. Nine former lobbyists work for the Department of Transportation, and another seven each work at the Energy, Labor and Commerce departments. Sixteen held current or former positions inside the White House.

Thedatabase also includes former members of the Trump administration now working as registered lobbyists, including nine members of his transition team. (The executive order only applied to those appointed on or after Jan. 20, 2017.)

The list includesTara Bradshaw, a veteran tax and finance lobbyist who advised the president on Treasury Department appointments then returned to her position atErnst & Young.

Another is:{Lauren Maddox:(style="box-sizing:inherit;max-height:1e+06px"):}:, with the firmHolland & Knight, who had lobbied on dozens of education-related bills and issues in the five years before joining Trump’s transition team as a Department of Education advisor in 2016.

Researcher Dan Auble contributed to this story

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