Donald Trump was emphatic on the campaign trail in 2016: If he made it into office, he would “drain the swamp” with an expansive ethics package cracking down on lobbying. Most of those proposals quickly went by the wayside. On the campaign trail again almost a year ago, Trump decried Washington’s revolving door as a “big problem.”
Now, barely a half-year into his second administration, a handful of senior White House aides are already heading for the exits — and right through the revolving door between the federal government and K Street, where they’re lining up cushy lobbying gigs.
On Wednesday, the all-Republican lobbying firm CGCN Group announced it has hired White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields.
A day earlier, POLITICO reported that Trent Morse will leave his post as deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel to launch his own lobbying firm. Morse is also partnering with another high-powered Beltway shop, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
Also on Tuesday, digital assets giant Tether announced that it had hired former White House cryptocurrency adviser Bo Hines to provide strategic advice on digital assets and U.S. strategy.
Earlier this month, longtime Trump adviser and senior White House strategist May Davis Mailman exited the administration to start her own government affairs firm.
The departures — and the White House’s response to them — show how Trump has abandoned any pretense of cleaning up the age-old ways of Washington, and they illustrate the ways in which his administration continues to push the bounds of ethics norms and guardrails designed to prevent government officials from profiting off their time in public service.
They also reflect the desperation from those outside the administration for help navigating a presidency where policies with massive financial implications for businesses, nonprofits, universities and more can change on a dime.
“The demand for these folks is so high that business and folks are looking for a sherpa for this administration, just because it's so different,” said Ivan Adler, who runs an executive search firm in Washington and calls himself the “Lobbyist Hunter.” “There aren't a lot of people out there, and people are taking advantage of that.”
Meanwhile, senior White House officials are publicly cheering on the career moves.
During his yearlong stint working for Trump’s transition team and in the White House, Morse has been “an important and integral part of the successes we’ve had,” White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told POLITICO in rare comments to the media.
Wiles is a former lobbyist herself, and has worked with Morse at two different lobbying shops — Ballard Partners and Mercury Public Affairs — over the past decade before ending up at the White House with him.
“As I see the lobbying world right now, what [clients] are looking for is some guidance about the process and some strategic … counsel” on how to deal with Trump, Wiles said. “Nobody is better able to do that” than Morse, she added.
Morse’s office at the White House has vetted more than 3,000 staffers for jobs in the administration, which gave him visibility into every federal agency.
“There’s not a department that I haven’t become familiar with or gotten an understanding on how it works,” Morse said in an interview. “And I think there’s a lot of opportunity to help clients navigate the way this administration [works] and how quickly this administration works.”
Wiles pointed to Morse’s work in both the first Trump administration as well as his current stint in Trump’s employ, all of which she said make Morse “very knowledgeable about … virtually every department — having worked on staffing … the leadership of the departments.”
It’s not uncommon for elected officials to issue flattering statements about longtime aides departing for roles in the influence industry.
But Wiles’ promotion of a high-ranking West Wing official’s value as a lobbyist nevertheless raised eyebrows among ethics experts in Washington.
“It's a commercial for him,” said Kedric Payne, who leads the ethics program at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center. “It's great for business.”
The implicit endorsement was almost as notable as the departures themselves, given how early into the administration they’re coming and the fact that they’re all voluntary rather than the result of being pushed out or fired.
“It may seem unusual and a little bit early” for so many West Wing aides to decamp for K Street, Adler said. “But I think we're in a different world.”
Administrations tend to see an exodus of staffers heading downtown between the one-year mark and the midterms. But the spate of recent departures “doesn't really surprise me, because the demand is so high,” he added. Because of that, Trump staffers heading into the private sector can command “top dollar,” Adler said.
In the cases of Morse and Fields, their federally mandated post-government cooling-off periods will be longer than the time they spent in Trump’s White House.
Morse and Fields are subject to a one-year cooling off period during which they are barred from lobbying the West Wing directly or representing any foreign entities. But they’re free to cash in on their front-row seats in the administration by lobbying Congress and the rest of the executive branch right away, or advising others lobbying the White House.
Employees leaving the White House receive a briefing from the government ethics office, a White House official granted anonymity to discuss internal protocol said.
Fields told POLITICO in a statement that he leaves the White House “with a heart full of incredible memories … [A]s I enter this new chapter, I look forward to continuing to support the MAGA movement in a new, deeply rewarding, and impactful capacity.”
As he announced his move, which was first reported by Axios, Fields was endorsed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. She called him “a trusted and steady presence throughout both Trump administrations, and his loyalty, commitment, and leadership have made a lasting impact.”
“As a veteran of the White House, the Trump 2024 campaign, and Capitol Hill, Harrison has consistently excelled at the highest levels of American politics,” CGCN managing partner Matt Rhoades said of Fields’ hire, adding that “his communications experience and deep understanding of the complexities of how Washington, DC really works today will be an invaluable asset to our firm.”
It was not clear whether Hines will register to lobby for Tether. He stepped down this month as executive director of the White House’s crypto council. Among his accomplishments was passage of landmark legislation setting up the first regulatory framework for stablecoins, which are pegged to assets like the U.S. dollar. Tether sells the world’s most popular stablecoin.
Hines plans to stay on with the White House as a special government employee, allowing him to serve — temporarily — in a hybrid role with the administration in addition to his private sector work. Davis Mailman also planned to stay on temporarily as a special government employee.
Trump himself has enabled these career moves.
In one of Trump’s first official acts as president in 2017, he signed an executive order that would have barred officials from lobbying the agency they worked at for five years after they left and banned former administration officials from ever lobbying for a foreign government or political party.
Trump’s ethics pledge also would have restricted appointees from supporting lobbying efforts from behind the scenes for either five years or for the remainder of the administration, depending on who the lobbying targeted. But the ethics rules didn’t stop dozens of former administration officials from entering the influence industry by the end of his first term in office.
But Trump revoked those restrictions on his last day in office, further freeing his former appointees from bans on lobbying or working for foreign governments.
Former President Joe Biden put his own ethics restrictions in place in 2021 — some of which were narrower than Trump’s — but on the first day of Trump’s second term, Trump withdrew those restrictions and has yet to issue a new set of ethics rules.
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