End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller released the following statement on reports of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles’ lobbying record and the conflicts of interests it creates:
“Donald Trump is assembling the most corrupt administration in history and installed corporate lobbyist Susie Wiles to be the ringleader of it all. Her new position as chief of staff will be a boon for corporations and foreign interests – especially her former clients. By filling his administration with billionaires, corporate executives, and lobbyists, Trump is putting the interests of the wealthy elite above hardworking Americans.”
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Associated Press: Trump’s incoming chief of staff is a former lobbyist. She’ll face a raft of special interests
Brian Slodysko, Joshua Goodman, and Alan Suderman
11/21/24
Key Sections:
- Trump was first elected on a pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington. But his transactional approach to the presidency instead ushered in a lobbying boom that showered allies, including Wiles, with lucrative contracts, empowered wealthy business associates and stymied his agenda after his administration was ensnared in a series of influence-peddling scandals.
- Now, as Trump prepares to return to power, his victory is likely to embolden those who think they can get his ear, raising the prospect that his second administration could face many of the same perils as his first. That will test the ability of Wiles to manage a growing number of high-powered figures — including Trump’s children, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and billionaires like Elon Musk — who will not be dependent on her for access to the president.
- The appointment of a former lobbyist to such an important job “bodes very poorly for what we are about to see from the next Trump administration,” said Craig Holman, himself a registered lobbyist for the government watchdog group Public Citizen. “This time around, Trump didn’t even mention ‘draining the swamp.’ … He’s not even pretending.”
- Many of Wiles’ clients were plain vanilla entities with obvious aims — General Motors, a trade group for children’s hospitals, homebuilders, and the City of Jacksonville, Florida.
- One in particular stood out that speaks to the ways, subtle or otherwise, that foreign interests seek to influence U.S. policy. In 2017, Wiles registered as a lobbyist for Globovisión, a Venezuelan TV network owned by Raúl Gorrín, a businessman charged in Miami with money laundering.
- After becoming Trump’s de facto campaign manager in 2022, Wiles kept on lobbying, this time for Mercury, a multinational public affairs and lobbying firm. Most recently she was representing the maker of Swisher Sweets cigars.
Fox News: Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff’s lobbying interest come under scrutiny
Chris Pandolfo
11/21/24
Key Sections:
- In his first term, President-elect Donald Trump burned through four White House chiefs of staff who tried in vain to police who had access to the president.
- Now, incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles, the “ice maiden,” will be tasked with guarding the president from special interests who seek to abuse the White House for their own personal gain. But progressives are calling out Wiles for her own history as a former corporate lobbyist and are raising concerns that her hire signals Trump does not intend to keep his promise to “drain the Swamp.”
- “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,” said Jon Golinger, the democracy advocate for Public Citizen, a non-profit, progressive consumer advocacy group. Public Citizen released a report authored by Golinger on Friday that details WIles’ lobbying disclosures and highlights her work on behalf of various special interests.
- “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,” Golinger said.
- Disclosures show Wiles also registered as a lobbyist for a multinational gaming company and for Waterton Global Resource Management Inc., a Canadian private equity firm that sought approval to construct a gold mine on public and private land near Las Vegas, Nevada.
- Her lobbying work continued during Trump’s 2024 campaign. Federal disclosures filed in April show she worked to influence Congress on “FDA regulations” on behalf of Swisher International, a tobacco company.
- Wiles most recently worked as the co-chair for the Florida and Washington, D.C., offices of Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying firm whose clients include AirBnB, AT&T, eBay, Pfizer, Tesla, and the Embassy of Qatar, although she is not a registered lobbyist for any of those clients.
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