These 5 former lobbyists are poised to join Trump’s Cabinet 

Five former lobbyists have been appointed or nominated to President-elect Trump’s Cabinet, signaling he may not be as closed off to these hired guns as he appeared on the campaign trail. 

Presidents from both parties have long tapped former lobbyists for high-level positions in their administration. Ron Klain had registered to lobby for clients including Fannie Mae, Time Warner and Cigna more than 15 years before he became President Biden’s first chief of staff, as did Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who previously lobbied for the National Education Association.

Incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, are both alums of the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, helmed by one of Trump’s top campaign bundlers Brian Ballard and staffed with Trump administration alums. 

Wiles, Trump’s campaign co-chair, was also a registered lobbyist with the firm Mercury Public Affairs as recently as the first quarter of 2024. 

Former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), Trump’s Transportation secretary nominee; Veterans Affairs secretary nominee and former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.); and U.S. trade representative (USTR) nominee Jamieson Greer have also registered to lobby in recent years. 

On the campaign trail, Trump said he’s “not a big person for lobbyists” and floated a ban on government and elected officials becoming lobbyists after they leave public service. 

“You have to stop listening to lobbyists. You know, I was not a big person for lobbyists. And if they have even a little access to, like, a president or senator or a congressman or woman, they get a lot of money,” Trump told podcaster and comedian Theo Von, who had asked him about the nearly 1,800 pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington during an August interview. 

Von then asked what could be done to rein in the influence of these lobbyists, who have long been protected by the First Amendment right to petition their government. 

“One way you could stop it is to say if you're going to go into government, you can never be a lobbyist,” Trump said. “You could say that if you're an elected official or if you work in government, you can never be a lobbyist.” 

Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt accused The Hill of writing “a ridiculous, and frankly insulting, hit piece against highly qualified and well-respected members of President Trump's team who are deeply committed to his mission to make America great again.” 

“All of President Trump's nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective roles because President Trump and his team only have one interest and that's putting the American people first,” said Leavitt, who will be Trump's White House press secretary.

Even so, the former lobbyists poised to join Trump’s Cabinet may come as a surprise to voters who heard his harsh criticism of hired advocates and the special interests they represent during the campaign, including during an October rally in Butler, Pa. 

"Above all, you deserve leadership in Washington that does not answer to the lobbyists, to the bureaucrats, or to the corrupt special interests, but answers only to you, the hardworking citizens of America," said Trump, who later invited billionaire CEO Elon Musk to join him on stage. 

A longtime political strategist, Wiles will become the first ever female chief of staff when Trump takes office next Monday. On election night, Trump took the stage to thank those who supported him, including Wiles, whom he said “likes to stay in the background.”  

“She’s not in the background,” Trump added. A day after he was declared the winner of the 2024 election, the president-elect appointed her as his chief of staff, one of the few Cabinet positions that does not require confirmation. 

As Wiles has stepped into the limelight, scrutiny of her past lobbying work has ramped up. 

Wiles’s lobbying work is tied closely to the first Trump administration. Wiles, who ran the Florida arm of Trump’s 2016 campaign, registered to lobby for 30 clients between 2017 and 2020 with Ballard Partners, according to federal lobbying disclosures. 

Wiles’s clients included the tobacco company SI Group Client Services, which has fought Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restrictions on tobacco products; the Pebble Partnership, which has sued the Environmental Protection Agency for standing in the way of its mining project in Alaska’s Bristol Bay; and the waste management company Republic Services, which has fought efforts to compel the company to remove radioactive nuclear waste from its dump in the St. Louis suburbs, according to a report by the progressive nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen. 

When Wiles moved to Mercury Public Affairs in 2022, she once again registered to lobby on FDA regulations for SI Group Client Services, her only lobbying client. She was listed as a lobbyist on the account as recently as the first quarter of 2024. 

Public Citizen demanded Wiles recuse herself from decisionmaking involving her past lobbying clients and agree to a voluntary ban on lobbying the White House and federal government when she leaves the Trump administration. 

Bondi has also faced scrutiny for her previous lobbying work with Ballard Partners, including for clients such as Republic Services, Amazon and Uber, which have been in the crosshairs of the Justice Department. 

Unlike Wiles, however, Bondi has to defend her past work before the Senate, including her work on behalf of the government of Qatar. Her confirmation hearing kicked off Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"I am concerned that you failed to identify your extensive lobbying for foreign governments and big corporations as potential conflicts of interest,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), ranking member of the committee, said during his opening remarks. 

When Durbin asked if Bondi would recuse herself from cases involving her past clients, Bondi said she would “consult with the career ethics officials within the Department of Justice and make the appropriate decision."

Duffy’s confirmation hearing also began Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee. 

He represented Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District from 2011 to 2019 and was a member of the House Financial Services Committee. After Duffy left Congress in 2019, he landed at the lobbying giant BGR Group, where he was co-head of the firm’s financial services practice and a member of the advisory board. 

Duffy was a registered lobbyist as recently as the first quarter of 2023, according to federal lobbying disclosures. He registered to lobby for eight clients, including Marcum LLP, which the Securities and Exchange Commission charged in June 2023 with “systemic quality control failures and violations of audit standards” for hundreds of clients. 

He also briefly lobbied for the Partnership for Open Skies, which represents American Airlines, Delta, United and several airline unions, on Gulf carrier issues in 2020. 

Both Collins and Greer were registered lobbyists as recently as the first quarter of 2024, although each reported just one federal lobbying client.

Collins registered to lobby on criminal justice reforms for the bipartisan nonprofit Justice Action Network. He received $270,000 between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2024, when he ended his lobbying work, according to federal lobbying registrations. 

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee postponed Collins’s hearing until next Tuesday, noting the Federal Bureau of Investigation had not completed his background check, but he had submitted all his paperwork. 

Greer, a partner at King & Spalding, was previously chief of staff to the U.S. trade representative during the first Trump administration. He joined the firm in 2020, working on its international trade team. 

At the end of 2022, Greer registered to lobby on investment arbitration enforcement for the Italian construction company Webuild, which the previous year sued the Argentine Republic in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for water and sewage construction service payments dating back to 1999. 

Greer is not one of the lawyers on the case, which is still ongoing, according to court documents. 

His confirmation hearings have not yet been scheduled by the Senate Finance Committee.