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susie wiles
Watchdogs Call Out Trump AG Pick Pam Bondi's Corporate Lobbying
One democracy advocate urged senators "to carefully scrutinize Bondi's lobbying record and ask what she will do when the interests of her lobbying clients again clash with the Department of Justice she now wants to lead."
Jan 08, 2025
When President-elect Donald Trump in mid-November decided to tap former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to succeed former Congressman Matt Gaetz as his pick for U.S. attorney general, details about Bondi's career, including her time as a corporate lobbyist, began to surface.
On Wednesday, two watchdog groups released reports that delve into Bondi's time as a lobbyist and say that their findings raise concerns about Bondi's fitness to serve as head of the Department of Justice.
The first report was published by the group Public Citizen and looks at federal lobbying disclosures and Foreign Agents Registration Act reports filed by Bondi and Ballard Partners, the lobbying outlet where Bondi worked as a registered federal lobbyist for the past five years. Ballard Partners also employed Susie Wiles, Trump's pick for White House chief of staff.
The other report, from the group Accountable.US, also looks at Bondi's time at Ballard Partners and reports that at least five of Bondi's major lobbying clients have "faced DOJ fines, investigations, or related scrutiny that could pose serious conflicts if she is confirmed as AG." The Public Citizen report also details DOJ scrutiny on some of these companies.
Jon Golinger, the author of the Public Citizen report, wrote in a statement Wednesday that "the U.S. attorney general should be the American people's lawyer—not a lobbyist for big corporations and foreign governments."
"As they evaluate this nomination, we urge senators to carefully scrutinize Bondi's lobbying record and ask what she will do when the interests of her lobbying clients again clash with the Department of Justice she now wants to lead," he added.
According to Public Citizen's report, Bondi was registered to lobby the federal government on behalf of 30 different clients—a list that included the government of Qatar, large corporations, and government contractors—between 2019 and 2024.
The report details that her corporate clients have included the car service Uber; the large private prison company the Geo Group; the waste management company Republic Services; the e-commerce giant Amazon.com; and others, according to the report.
The watchdog found that lobbying reports filed in 2020 reveal that Bondi's firm was paid $120,000 that year by Uber to lobby federal offices on "issues related to sharing economy, surface transportation measures, foreign regulation of data management, regulatory relief, and legislative measures for Covid-19." Offices lobbied included the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of the Treasury, and the Small Business Administration.
Public Citizen reported that Bondi also retained two clients through 2024: the Florida Sheriffs Association and the Florida Sheriffs Risk Management Fund.
Both reports also detail that many of these companies have come under scrutiny from the agency that Bondi is tapped to lead.
Accountable.US highlights, for example, that in 2023 the DOJ imposed a $25 million civil penalty on Amazon to resolve allegations that its Alexa service illegally retained recordings of children's voices. Another former client, General Motors—who Bondi had as a client in 2020 and 2021—reached a settlement with the DOJ in 2023 to resolve the DOJ's determination that the company imposed a "discriminatory barrier" against lawful permanent residents in its hiring processes.
"Pam Bondi's career lobbying for corporate clients that had run-ins with the DOJ now poses potential conflicts of interest and serious questions whether she will put her personal interests ahead of the American people," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk in a statement Wednesday. "People are tired of this same, old insider game."
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Watchdog Demands Trump Release Report on Probe of 'Pay-for-Play' Scheme
Public Citizen's co-leader argues that if such an operation "has corrupted the political appointment process in the Trump transition, as seems to be the case, the full facts must be disclosed to the American people."
Nov 27, 2024
The watchdog Public Citizen on Wednesday demanded that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team release a report from an internal investigation into allegations that aide Boris Epshteyn asked potential nominees to pay him monthly consulting fees in exchange for pushing for them to get jobs in the next administration.
"If a pay-for-play operation has corrupted the political appointment process in the Trump transition, as seems to be the case, the full facts must be disclosed to the American people," said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman in a statement. "If one of Mr. Trump's close advisers has been compromised by personal monetary considerations, then the personnel selection process itself has been compromised."
In a letter to Trump transition co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, Weissman and Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert noted that "media accounts indicate that the internal report discovered at least two specific incidents where Mr. Epshteyn made inappropriate demands for payment, so the concerns appear far beyond speculative."
Multiple outlets, including Just the News and CNN, reported on the existence of the internal review on Monday.
"One of those who was pitched by Epshteyn for both a consulting contract and an investment opportunity was Scott Bessent, the hedge fund manager named Friday night by Trump as his nominee for Treasury secretary. Bessent rejected the overtures and eventually, when asked, reported concerns about them to the Trump transition team, including Vice President-elect JD Vance," Just the News detailed. "Trump late last week ordered an internal inquiry into the consulting arrangements of Ephsteyn and other contractors to be conducted by lawyer David Warrington with the results to be delivered to his incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles."
Just the News continued:
Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a retired Navy SEAL who previously hired Epshteyn for consulting on an unsuccessful Senate candidacy in 2022, reported to the transition team in a sworn statement that he had an uncomfortable conversation this month with Epshteyn when he inquired about whether he should apply for the job of Navy secretary. "It is too early for that, let's talk business," Greitens quoted Epshteyn as telling him.
"Mr. Epshteyn's overall tone and behavior gave me the impression of an implicit expectation to engage in business dealings with him before he would advocate for or suggest my appointment to the president," Greitens wrote in a statement that was submitted Friday to the Trump transition office and obtained by Just the News. "This created a sense of unease and pressure on my part."
Greitens immediately alerted his lawyer to the concerns, who arranged for the statement to be sent to Warrington, the lawyer named by Trump and Wiles to probe the issue, according to interviews and documents.
While
CNN reported that the claims "prompted those looking into the matter to make an initial recommendation that Epshteyn should be removed from Trump's proximity and that he should not be employed or paid by Trump entities," the aide broadly denied the alleged behavior.
"I am honored to work for President Trump and with his team," Epshteyn said in a statement. "These fake claims are false and defamatory and will not distract us from Making America Great Again."
In a statement to both outlets, Trump spokesperson Steve Cheung said that "as is standard practice, a broad review of the campaign's consulting agreements has been conducted and completed, including as to Boris, among others. We are now moving ahead together as a team to help President Trump Make America Great Again."
Trump himself told Just the News that "I suppose every president has people around them who try to make money off them on the outside. It's a shame but it happens."
"But no one working for me in any capacity should be looking to make money. They should only be here to Make America Great Again," he added. "No one can promise any endorsement or nomination except me. I make these decisions on my own, period."
Weissman and Gilbert wrote Wednesday: "No doubt Mr. Trump makes his own decisions on personnel. But advisers frame decisions, push for candidates they like, make the case against those they disfavor, and sometimes act as gatekeepers influencing who gets consideration at all. No one doubts that close advisers are impactful."
"The American people have a right to know the facts your internal review has found," the watchdog leaders concluded.
The probe into Epshteyn is part of a flood of ethics problems with Trump's transition team and future administration. Another issue has been a delay in signing transition agreements with the Biden administration. Wiles announced Tuesday that the team finally signed a memorandum of understanding with President Joe Biden's White House.
Wiles also signaled that rather than signing a separate agreement with the General Services Administration to access federal funding, government office space, and cybersecurity support, Trump's transition team will run a privately funded operation. Politicoreported that the team did not respond to a question about another agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that enables the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to run background checks and start processing security clearances for Cabinet nominees.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has criticized the delays in the transition process that is laid out in federal law, said Tuesday that "this announcement fails to answer key questions about national security threats and FBI vetting of nominees, and increases concerns about corruption. There appear to be serious gaps between the Trump transition's ethics agreement and the letter of the law."
While Wiles said the team will disclose its funders and not take foreign money, Warren added that "the reliance on private donors to fund the transition is nothing more than a ploy for well-connected Trump insiders to line their pockets while pretending to save taxpayers money."
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Trump Has Placed 'For Sale' Sign on White House With Chief of Staff Pick: Watchdog
"A lobbyist with this record of controversial representation and a minefield of potential conflicts of interest should not go near the Oval Office, much less be White House chief of staff."
Nov 15, 2024
A government watchdog group said Friday that President-elect Donald Trump has effectively signaled that the incoming administration is open for business by choosing longtime Republican strategist Susie Wiles—a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry and other sordid interests—as his White House chief of staff.
In a new report, Public Citizen shows that Wiles represented at least 42 clients as a registered federal government lobbyist between 2017 and 2024—corporate influence-peddling that continued even while she helped run Trump's 2024 presidential bid.
Among Wiles' clients, according to the watchdog group, were:
- A waste management company that has resisted removing nuclear waste from its radioactive landfill;
- A foreign copper and gold mining company that wants to eliminate federal opposition to its plan to dig a massive mine in a pristine watershed;
- A tobacco company that sought to block federal health restrictions on its candy-flavored cigars, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found are attractive to kids;
- A foreign news company whose owner has been indicted for money laundering; and
- A foreign mining private equity firm seeking approval to develop an open-pit leach gold mine on federal public lands.
"By putting a corporate lobbyist in charge of his administration with his first act as president-elect, Trump is hanging a 'For Sale' sign on the front door of the White House," Jon Golinger, a democracy advocate at Public Citizen and author of the new report. "A lobbyist with this record of controversial representation and a minefield of potential conflicts of interest should not go near the Oval Office, much less be White House chief of staff."
White House chief of staff is a powerful position that does not require Senate approval. In the role, Wiles will control the flow of information and those who have access to the president as well as manage White House personnel.
Trump's selection of Wiles flies in the face of his previous pledge to "drain the swamp" and recent criticism of the disproportionate influence lobbyists wield in Washington, D.C.
"They're making a lot of money, absolutely," Trump acknowledged in an August appearance on the "This Past Weekend" podcast with comedian Theo Von. "One way you could stop it is to say if you're going to go into government, you can never be a lobbyist."
"You have to stop listening to lobbyists," Trump said. "You know, I was not a big person for lobbyists."
In fact, according toProPublica, the first Trump administration hired more than 280 lobbyists—one for every 14 political appointments.
The campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets reported in 2021 that Ballard Partners, Wiles' lobbying firm, "increased its revenue with each year of Trump’s presidency, peaking in 2020 with a $24.4 million haul."
"Wiles' lobbying client list is both extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House."
Corporate influence inside the second Trump administration will likely be even stronger given the presence of Wiles and other figures such as Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a major beneficiary of government contracts. Earlier this week, Trump tapped Musk and biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead a commission tasked with recommending sweeping cuts to federal spending and regulations.
Public Citizen called Trump's decision to form such a commission and place Musk at its helm "the ultimate corporate corruption."
In its new report, the watchdog argued that a person with Wiles' lobbying history "should not be White House chief of staff."
But assuming she ultimately takes the position in January, Public Citizen called on Wiles to disclose details of her lobbying work, including "the names of the individuals she lobbied, what she asked those individuals to do or not to do, and what resulted from her lobbying"; recuse herself from "all decision-making involving her past lobbying clients and the federal agencies that are making decisions that affect her lobbying clients"; and agree not to lobby the federal government again after she leaves the White House.
"Wiles' lobbying client list is both extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House," Public Citizen said Friday. "This report's findings raise serious questions about potential conflicts of interest that need to be answered before Inauguration Day."
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