A natural gas company that did not exist five months ago is already paying $380,000 a quarter for a lobbyist who, until this spring, ran oil and gas leasing policy at the Interior Department. A former White House liaison to the Senate left in February and by summer was lobbying U.S. senators for a German utility. A director of operations in Susie Wiles' office was working in the West Wing as of April, but by July she'd registered to lobby on behalf of a lithium mine.
None of this is illegal, because on his first day back in office in January 2025, President Trump rescinded the Biden administration's ethics pledge requiring executive branch appointees to wait two years before lobbying their former agencies. He also declined to revive his own stronger "drain the swamp” ethics pledge from his first term, which barred appointees from lobbying their former agencies for five years after leaving government, a restriction he revoked himself in an order signed hours before leaving office in January 2021.
Government ethics groups raised alarms when the second Trump administration took office without an ethics pledge in place. The Campaign Legal Center noted that presidents have traditionally issued ethics rules for political appointees at the start of a new administration, and warned that operating without an ethics pledge would make the Trump administration "more susceptible to outside interests and influence."
Eighteen months later, the results are becoming apparent in federal lobbying disclosures. A Sludge review of Q2 lobbying disclosures filed this week found multiple recent Trump administration officials moving into influence-peddling jobs within months of leaving government, in some cases now lobbying the same executive offices where they recently worked.
Adam Suess left his post as acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department in late February of this year and immediately took a job as principal at Squire Patton Boggs, where his client list includes the American Petroleum Institute, Pilot Company, the private equity firm KKR, crypto venture firm Paradigm Operations, and more. His single largest client is Polar LNG, which paid Squire Patton Boggs $380,000 in the second quarter alone, more than double what Suess's next-largest client paid. Polar LNG only incorporated in late March 2026, is pursuing a $8–9 billion nearshore LNG export terminal on Alaska's North Slope and has said publicly that it wants to buy discounted equipment from Arctic LNG 2, a Russian project under U.S. sanctions, which would require sign-off from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Lobbying disclosures show Suess has already returned to lobbying the Interior Department he recently helped run. In one filing, Squire Patton Boggs reported him lobbying the department in Q2 on behalf of agribusiness company Simplot on issues related to mining, agriculture, and food products.
Harrison Fields, who was principal deputy press secretary and a special assistant to the president until August 2025, is now a senior vice president at CGCN Group, a Republican lobbying and public affairs shop. His Q2 clients include GlobalFoundries, the semiconductor manufacturer, and Infleqtion, a quantum computing firm, both of which are part of industries the administration has designated strategic priorities. During that second quarter, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to accelerate quantum technology development, and Infleqtion's CEO attended the signing at the White House, where Fields worked less than a year earlier. Infleqtion has also recently been selected by the Commerce Department for $100 million in proposed funding for its quantum computing work. CGCN's filings show Fields lobbying the Commerce Department, in addition to the White House Office and the Executive Office of the President.
Taylor LaJoie, who ran Senate liaison work in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs until February 2026, is now a vice president at the bipartisan Alpine Group, lobbying senators, representatives, the Energy Department, Treasury Department, and more agencies for clients including the German utility RWE and the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Coalition.
Staff from the vice president’s office are similarly turning around to lobby their recent colleagues. Sean Cooksey served as counsel to Vice President JD Vance and was the administration's point person on the deal that moved TikTok's U.S. operations to a joint venture backed by American investors. Before that, Cooksey chaired the Federal Election Commission, the agency that oversees campaign-finance law, through the 2024 election. He left the vice president's office in February 2026 to join lobbying firm BGR Group as a managing director in its Commerce and Infrastructure practice. His Q2 client list includes Zillow, the Little Tech Association, and two clients with foreign-trade stakes: SanDisk, the memory-chip maker, and Hindalco Industries, an Indian aluminum and copper conglomerate. BGR's filings for both SanDisk and Hindalco list the White House Office among the offices lobbied.