Before Pam Bondi was sworn in as Trump’s attorney general, the former Florida AG spent six years as a lobbyist at Ballard, where she was a partner in its D.C. office and chaired the firm’s corporate regulatory compliance practice focusing on Fortune 500 companies.
Among the clients for whom Ballard reported lobbying DOJ this year, all but one signed with the firm since Trump’s election and his nomination of Bondi for attorney general.
A similar phenomenon is occurring across K Street at lobbying firms that have former employees in top roles with the Trump administration.
At BGR Group, where now-Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was previously a lobbyist and member of the firm’s advisory board, lobbyists have reported outreach to DOT on behalf of 19 clients who have paid the firm more than $1.8 million so far this year. That’s up from 14 clients during the Biden administration, which included the passage of the first major infrastructure bill in years. BGR contacted DOT on behalf of six different clients during Trump’s first term, according to a POLITICO analysis of disclosure filings.
Both Bondi and Duffy signed ethics agreements prior to being confirmed. They vowed not to participate “personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties” involving their former firms and clients of their former firms, as well as their own former clients — unless they receive a waiver from the department’s ethics chief.
Those restrictions are up in a year. But in the meantime, firms are free to lobby anyone else in the agencies in question so long as those officials are not under ethics restrictions of their own. And there’s nothing stopping the lobbyists-turned-Cabinet secretaries from interacting with their former firms in social settings.
But the lobbying by Ballard and BGR Group illustrates how, just six months into Trump’s second term, the firms have been able to cash in on their unique ties to the administration.
Lobbying disclosures aren’t required to provide details about specific lobbying contacts within a given department or agency. But even if the former lobbyists in positions of power in the Trump administration aren’t in direct contact with their old firms, they of course still have significant sway within their departments.
“If it’s known that a Cabinet secretary wants clients to be dealt with on an amiable basis, that can happen without an express directive going out or an ethics agreement being directly violated,” said Jeff Hauser, founder of the executive branch ethics watchdog Revolving Door Project. “This is why conflicts of interest are hard to paper away” with hard-to-verify promises of throwing up firewalls.
The Bondi-Ballard connection
Ballard spokesperson Justin Sayfie said the firm has fully complied with all lobbying requirements.
“No Ballard lobbyists have communicated with Attorney General Bondi in her role as Attorney General,” he said in a statement. “We are prohibited from doing so for one year after her swearing-in, and all Ballard lobbyists have meticulously abided by that restriction.”
Sayfie declined to elaborate on the firm’s work at DOJ for any of its clients beyond what’s in the required lobbying disclosures. And he disputed the notion that Ballard would market its access to the attorney general to prospective clients — or market itself at all. “Our firm’s record of effective and successful advocacy speaks for itself in the marketplace,” he said.
Ballard has reported more than $1 million in lobbying revenues from clients for whom it lobbied DOJ in 2025.
Some Ballard clients facing off with Bondi’s DOJ have seen a distinct change in fortunes after hiring the firm. Take American Express Global Business Travel.
At the end of July, the department moved to dismiss its legal challenge of a merger between the business travel management company, which retained Ballard in March to lobby explicitly on antitrust issues, and fellow business travel company CWT Holdings.
American Express GBT paid Ballard — its only registered lobbyists at the federal level — $200,000 for its work, which only focused on the Justice Department, filings show.
DOJ’s move to allow the merger to move forward followed a turbulent few days for the department’s antitrust division, which saw a pair of top deputies fired for alleged insubordination. One of those deputies, Roger Alford, proceeded to accuse top DOJ officials of doing the bidding of “MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists” when it comes to antitrust enforcement. (No Ballard lobbyists or clients were among those mentioned by name, and a DOJ spokesperson told The American Prospect that Bondi had no involvement in the AmEx case.)
DOJ spokesperson Gates McGavick did not respond to a list of questions about the ethics precautions Bondi has taken while in office or whether she’d been granted any ethics waivers. “Attorney General Bondi adheres to the highest applicable ethical obligations in all matters and her prior work before taking office has no nexus with her work as Attorney General,” he said in a statement.
Sean Duffy and the DOT
BGR Group lobbied the Transportation Department on behalf of seven clients that hired the firm since around the time Trump was inaugurated, lobbying disclosures show. They include Delta Air Lines, whose CEO was one of several who met with Duffy in Washington this month to discuss modernizing the nation’s air traffic control systems.
Delta is a former client of Duffy’s, albeit indirectly.
The Transportation secretary was previously registered to lobby for the Partnership for Fair and Open Skies, a coalition of major U.S. airlines and unions that counts Delta as a member. Duffy and BGR stopped lobbying on behalf of the coalition — which was primarily focused on a dispute with Middle Eastern airlines — amid the pandemic in 2020. Financial disclosures filed during Duffy’s confirmation process show Duffy consulted for the alliance within the past two calendar years, though Duffy said during his confirmation hearing that he has “since had no relationship or contact with the partnership.”
Delta and Duffy’s other former airline clients have been on something of a winning streak for various other priorities under Trump. The GOP megabill signed into law in July included $12.5 billion in funding for upgrading air traffic control systems.
More recently, DOT revealed plans to withdraw or amend a slew of Biden-era consumer protection proposals for air travelers. Among those on the chopping block is a rule challenged by airlines in court that would have required airlines to disclose fees for things like checked or carry-on bags or making changes to their itinerary.
A department spokesperson called the premise of this story “absurd” and said “Secretary Duffy’s time in advocacy involved a very brief period of work for the Open Skies Partnership” that was “strictly focused on international affairs and encouraging access for U.S. carriers into foreign markets. No part of that work involved domestic aviation policy.”
Duffy “has and will continue to abide by his signed ethics agreement,” the spokesperson added. “The Department’s decisions are guided by President Trump’s ambitious transportation agenda and addressing the needs of the American people. That’s it. No single individual or company is given preferential treatment.”
BGR’s other new transportation clients include the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, federal IT contractor Karsun Solutions, which works with the FAA, and LNG company ST Energy.
BGR has several longer-term clients for whom the firm has lobbied DOT across presidential administrations. They include The Canadian National Railway and shipping giant DHL Express as well as pipeline company Enterprise Products, for which Duffy previously worked, according to his financial disclosures.
BGR has even lobbied DOT on behalf of one of its foreign clients: the Angolan government, which hired the firm in May.
Last October, the U.S. and Angola struck an agreement to ease the way for more flights between the two countries, and this spring, state-run carrier TAAG Angola Airlines requested approval from DOT for a direct route to Houston as one of the next steps in that agreement. DOJ filings show that BGR lobbyists provided Angola strategic advice and made several requests for meetings with DOT about the issue. It’s unclear whether those meetings took place.
BGR spokesperson Jeff Birnbaum said that the firm lets “our filings speak for themselves.”
The White House chief of staff
Susie Wiles previously served as co-chair of the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs’ Washington and Florida offices (she’s also a Ballard alum).
As White House chief of staff, Wiles has a sprawling portfolio. She oversees the Executive Office of the President, which comprises offices like the National Security Council, Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget, and she runs the White House Office, which comprises the president’s most senior aides along with the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council and more.
This year, Mercury has reported lobbying the Executive Office of the President or the White House Office — which are run by the chief of staff — on behalf of 26 domestic clients, nearly two-thirds of which are new.
They include Alphamin Resources Corp., the owner of a tin mine in eastern Congo, which paid the firm $160,000 for less than three months of work this spring.
Mercury pushed for the White House to intervene when advances by the rebel militia group M23 prompted Alphamin to evacuate the mine. The mine was able to reopen in April when the militia group retreated — the credit for which belongs to Trump, senior Africa adviser Massad Boulos said during a trip to the continent.
Mercury also reported lobbying the White House on behalf of the main trade association for pharmacy benefit managers after Trump pledged to “knock out” the pharmaceutical middlemen.
The firm has already reported lobbying the West Wing on behalf of more clients in the first half of this year than it did in all four years of the Biden administration. During Trump’s first term, Mercury reported lobbying the White House on behalf of 44 different clients.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Wiles an “outstanding public servant,” adding in a statement that “anyone who works with Susie knows that she holds herself to the highest ethical and moral standards.”
“The President’s entire team is working with the best interests of the country in mind,” said Leavitt.
Mercury spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on the firm’s lobbying work targeting the West Wing.
A Washington tradition
Trump isn’t the only president whose administration has faced questions about the strength of firewalls between members of the administration and lobbying firms they worked at previously.
One of former President Joe Biden’s top White House advisers, Steve Ricchetti, was a former lobbyist. Ricchetti Inc., the firm where he once worked with his brother, Jeff, saw a huge bump in business following Biden’s election in 2020. During the first three months of Biden’s term, Jeff Ricchetti reported lobbying the West Wing on behalf of four of his clients, including a handful of pharmaceutical companies and the owner of a contentious pipeline that Biden canceled.
The White House insisted that the Ricchetti brothers did not discuss business and maintained that Steve Ricchetti recused himself from particular matters involving Ricchetti’s West Wing lobbying clients. In June 2021, Jeff Ricchetti told The Washington Post that he would no longer lobby the White House Office.
And before the Ricchetti brothers, there were the public sector-private sector power siblings John and Tony Podesta. Tony Podesta, a onetime kingmaker on K Street, reported lobbying the West Wing during all three administrations in which John Podesta served — as everything from climate czar to White House chief of staff.
“There’s always been a revolving door,” said one veteran Democratic lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It doesn’t shock me that a member of Congress like … Duffy becomes secretary, and then people who used to work for him, or the firm he used to work at, gets business. I mean, that’s been known to happen.”
What’s more unusual, the lobbyist said, is the increased DOJ outreach.
“DOJ has always been sort of a temple of, yes, lawyers talk to lawyers over there, but lobbyists don’t, like, go talk to the attorney general,” the person added, unlike other federal agencies like the Commerce or Transportation departments.
Hiring the former lobbying firm of a high-level official doesn’t guarantee a win.
Sealed is a startup that provides up-front cash for contractors looking to take advantage of rebate programs for energy efficiency upgrades. It retained Mercury in February to try and cajole the Trump administration and congressional Republicans into preserving the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy incentives in their megabill. They ultimately chose not to do so.
And despite the airline industry’s big regulatory rollbacks over at DOT’s Navy Yard headquarters, Duffy this week withdrew approval and antitrust protections for a joint venture between Delta and Aeromexico. Delta tried to fight the move earlier this summer, but Duffy ordered the carriers to wind down their partnership by the end of the year.
The DOT spokesperson pointed to the move as further evidence of Duffy’s lack of favoritism for a client of his old firm.
And over the summer, Duffy yanked billions in federal funding for a California high-speed rail project that has been among the top priorities of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association. Duffy derided the California project as a “fantasy” and a “failed experiment.” But he vowed to invest instead in “well-managed projects that can make projects like high speed rail a reality.”