Tracker: Trump Appointees’ Corporate Conflicts of Interest
Donald Trump’s nominees for cabinet positions and other important political appointments are riddled with conflicts of interest. As was the case with Trump’s first administration, his second administration appears to be handing people with clear corporate conflicts of interest the power to regulate and oversee corporations.
Public Citizen is following the money — and holding them accountable.
| Name | Agency | Title | Prior Employment | Former Clients/Business Interests | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scott Bessent | Treasury | Secretary | Billionaire founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, formerly chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management | Other former clients include Jim Rogers, Jim Chanos, and Stanley Druckenmiller. Early in his career, he worked as securities analyst and options trader at the investment arm of a Saudi Arabian family. | Sources |
| Todd Blanche | Department of Justice | Deputy Attorney General | DOJ, WilmerHale, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, Blanche Law | Blanche led Trump's legal defense in his federal criminal case and in the criminal "hush money" trial over charges of deceiving voters. He previously represented Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani associate Igor Fruman. | Sources |
| Pam Bondi | Department of Justice | Attorney General | Lobbyist, Ballard Partners (2019-2024); Florida Attorney General (2011-2019) | Lobbied for 30 corporate, foreign government, and organization clients including: GEO Group. private prisons company seeking more government contracts; lottery and gaming company IGT Global Solutions which was battling the Justice Department; as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar; KGL Investment Company KSCC - a Kuwaiti company; Republic Services to oppose being required by the government to remove nuclear waste from a toxic waste dump in Missouri; Carnival Cruise Lines; General Motors, Amazon, Uber | See more |
| Emil Bove | Department of Justice | Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General | DOJ, Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi, Blanche Law | Co-counsel for Trump's legal defense in federal criminal case and in the criminal "hush money" trial over charges of deceiving voters. According to Blanche Law bio, also "represents clients in white-collar criminal and regulatory defense matters." | Sources |
| Doug Burgum | Department of the Interior | Secretary | Billionaire, former software company exec (sold to Microsoft), real estate investor | Burgum is a close ally of billionaire oil and gas executive Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources. His family has leased land to Continental Resources. | See More |
| Sean Duffy | Department of Transportation | Secretary | BGR Group | Duffy has been a lobbyist for Partnership for Open Skies (inc. America, Delta, United), Polaris Industries | See more |
| Howard Lutnick | Department of Commerce | Secretary | Cantor Fitzgerald | Lutnik has ties to the crypto industry (Tether) and the financial exchange FMX. Lutnick has already been accused of mixing his business interests and transition duties. | See more |
| Dr. Marty Makary | FDA | Commissioner | Surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University | Makary is an executive of the telehealth company Sesame, which connects consumers to physicians who can prescribe compounded weight-loss drugs. In 2023, he received $40,000 in payments from Harrow Eye, LLC, a company that makes pharmaceutical products to treat eye conditions. He serves on the board of directors of Harrow. | See more |
| William McGinley | Department of Government Efficiency | Counsel | Lawyer and corporate lobbyist, former Assistant to the President and White House Cabinet Secretary in the First Trump Administration. | McGinley lobbied for The Vogel Group from 2019-2024, where he had 17 lobbying clients including: major defense contractor Vectrus (now V2X, Inc.); two Russian billionaires; 5 energy industry companies Clearway Energy Group, Invenergy LLC, NextEra Energy, Quantum Energy Inc., Svante Technologies, Inc., and SmileDirectClub. | Sources |
| Linda McMahon | Department of Education | Secretary | Trump's first Small Business Association Administrator; chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, a right wing think tank focused on enacting Trump's agenda; chair of the pro-Trump America First Action SuperPAC | WWE: As Trump’s SBA Administrator in 2017, McMahon and her husband made at least $100 million off “dividends, interest on investments and sales of stocks and bonds." | See more |
| Elon Musk | Department of Government Efficiency | Co-Director | Billionaire entrepreneur (Tesla, X, SpaceX, Neuralink) | Himself, the companies he owns (several of which are under federal investigation) | Sources |
| Janette Nesheiwat | Department of Health and Human Services | Surgeon General | Physician, Medical Director for CityMD urgent care provider in New York, Fox News medical contributor | Nesheiwat is the creator and proprietor of the supplement BC Boost. | Sources |
| Dr. Mehmet Oz | Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services | Director | Daytime TV personality; failed Senate candidate | Dr. Oz is the global advisor for iHerb, a supplement company. He has repeatedly been accused of promoting dubious products on his TV shows. For example, he promoted a product made by a company called PanTheryx, in which he held a major investment stake. Disclosure forms from his 2022 Senate run revealed a vast array of investments, many in health care related businesses, including up to $600,000 in UnitedHealth, the major insurer. He reported more than $2 million in Amazon stock, which has major health care interests, and lesser holdings in numerous drug companies. | See more |
| David Sacks | White House | AI & Crypto Czar | Currently co-founder and partner in venture capital firm Craft Ventures and co-founder of Glue, an AI-enhanced Slack competitor. Former Paypal executive, CEO and founder of Yammer (which Microsoft acquired for $1.2 billion), and founder of Geni, a genealogy website. Invested in and served as interim CEO of Zenefits, whose CEO resigned amid allegations of widespread violations of state insurance broker licensing laws. | Sacks has made "notable investments" in Addepar, Affirm, Airbnb, CloudKitchens, Eventbrite, Facebook, Getaround, Gusto, Houzz, Intercom, Lyft, Opendoor, Palantir, PlanGrid, Postmates, Quora, Reddit, Scribd, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber, Vanta, Wish, and Xoom. He also is a "board member or observer" for CloudTrucks, ClickUp, Knock, OpenPhone, Roboflow, Rumble, Scratchpad, SentiLink, Sourcegraph, and Vendr. Additional corporations Craft Ventures is invested in include: Meta and Elon Musk's Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. On crypto, he reportedly holds significant amounts of Solana crypto (SOL) and is an investor in crypto investment firm Multicoin Capital. Co-authored anti-DEI book "The Diversity Myth" with Peter Thiel. A significant political donor, he previously backed Romney and Hillary Clinton. He also called for a government bailout of Silicon Valley Bank. Hosts podcast "All In," which is reportedly popular among tech sector conservatives. | Sources |
| D. John Sauer | Department of Justice | Solicitor General | Missouri Attorney General's office, Cooper & Kirk, James Otis Law Group (private firm) | Sauer represented Trump in a case before the US Supreme Court arguing the president should be immune from prosecution. He also led states filing amicus briefs supporting overturning the 2020 presidential election. Sauer is a Federalist Society member, and has litigated to restrict abortion rights, protect restrictions on transgender participation in school sports, and claim government pressure on social media corporations to reduce COVID misinformation violates the First Amendment. | Sources |
| Gail Slater | Department of Justice | Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division | JD Vance's Senate office, Fox, Roku, Trump White House, Internet Association | Slater worked as general counsel for the Internet Association, Senior Vice President For Policy and Strategy at Fox Corporation, and as a Vice President for Roku, for which she lobbied Congress on antitrust legislation as recently as 2023. The Internet Association, which dissolved in 2021, was a lobbying group representing many of the largest tech corporations, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Paypal, Twitter, and Uber. When representing the Internet Association, met with Trump's FCC chair Ajit Pai to lobby against the repeal of Net Neutrality. Michael Beckerman, the CEO of the Internet Association during Slater's tenure, is now an in-house lobbyist for Tiktok. Brill, who Slater worked under at FTC, is now a regulatory affairs executive at Microsoft. | Sources |
| Michael Waltz | National Security | Advisor | Member of Congress since 2019. Army veteran. Founded and sold the defense contractor Metis Solutions. | Waltz has close ties to the defense industry. He help found and then sold the defense contractor Metis Solutions. The sale may have netted him as much as $25 million. In his most recent House financial disclosure, Waltz disclosed he is an investor, and is owed a future equity stake in, the AI company BoodleAI. | See more |
| Susie Wiles | White House | Chief of Staff | Lobbyist, Mercury Public Affairs (Feb. 2022-Nov. 2024); Lobbyist/Managing Partner, Ballard Partners (2011-Sept. 2019); Trump Presidential Campaigns | Wiles has been registered to lobby on behalf of 42 clients including corporations, govt. contractors, and a foreign political party. Some examples: Republic Services, Pebble Partnership-Northern Dynasty Minerals, and Swisher tobacco company. As Chief of Staff, she'll be in a position to influence permits, approvals, and contracts that her former lobbying clients paid her to lobby for. | See more |
| Chris Wright | Department of Energy | Secretary | Liberty Energy CEO | Wright has extensive business connections in the oil & gas and fracking sectors. | See more |
| Lee Zeldin | Environmental Protection Agency | Administrator | Member of Congress 2015-2023 and ran unsuccessfully for NY Governor in 2022. In 2023, Zeldin founded Zeldin Strategies, a corporate consulting firm helping clients with "strategy, public relations, acquisitions, crisis management, and much more." | Zeldin has former corporate clients. It is currently unclear exactly who Zeldin's corporate clients were at Zeldin Strategies | Sources |
| David Bernhardt | Transition Team | N/A | Chair of the Center for American Freedom at America First Policy Institute; Interior Secretary under Trump, lawyer for Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck | Bernhardt’s previous lobbying clients included oil & gas and resource extraction interests Cobalt International Energy, Samson Resources, the Rosemont Copper open pit mine in Arizona, and the Cadiz Inc. groundwater pumping project in California. He also represented the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Haliburton Energy Services as legal clients. | See More |
| Andrew Wheeler | Transition Team | N/A | EPA Secretary under Trump; Director of the Virginia Office of Regulatory Management under Gov. Glenn Youngkin; Lobbyist for Faegre Baker Daniels | Wheeler has business ties to Murray Energy, Nuclear Energy Institute, Whirlpool Corp, Sargento Foods and chemical company Celanese Corp. | See more |