Doug Burgum
Net Worth: Over $100 Million
- Doug Burgum holds multiple powerful roles within the Trump administration as Secretary of the Interior, chair of the new National Energy Dominance Council, and member of the National Security Council.
- The National Energy Dominance Council is tasked with coming up with a plan to reduce federal regulation, expedite approvals for dirty energy infrastructure, and increase the extraction of fossil fuels and other resources on public lands.
- Doug Burgum is a multi-millionaire tech executive, venture capitalist, and real estate developer who sold his software company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001. Forbes estimates his current wealth to be over $100 million.
- Burgum was North Dakota’s two-term governor from 2016-2024, and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2023 with a largely self-financed campaign.
- Burgum offered $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people to donate a dollar or more to his campaign, and in the first month raised $11.8 million, 87 percent of which was from Burgum himself.
- Burgum has longstanding personal and professional ties to the fossil fuel industry, and advocated for weakened regulations and fewer taxes on polluting industry as governor of North Dakota. One of his most prominent ties to the industry is his relationship with billionaire fracking executive Harold Hamm of Continental Resources. Hamm made his fortune fracking the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, and collaborated with Governor Burgum before joining forces on Trump’s presidential campaign to solicit donations from oil and gas CEOs and formulate a pro-fossil fuel energy agenda for the administration.
- As Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Burgum is looking to boost the exploitation of public lands for fossil fuel and mineral resources, shrink the size of national monuments, increase offshore drilling, burn more coal, and open up undeveloped Alaskan lands to exploitation. Burgum has said he “completely embrac[es]” DOGE’s firing spree, even as Interior has fired thousands of workers, including those managing water resources in the American West, overseeing offshore drilling and wind turbines, monitoring natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanic activity, and other experts.
For more information, see the Revolving Door Project’s Billionaires in Trump World tracker.