This newsletter was originally published on our Substack. Read and subscribe here.
Welcome to week sixteen of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight examples of corporate corruption shaping the Trump administration’s agenda and their material impact on everyday people. Read our first fifteen issues here and follow us on Bluesky and X for updates.
This week, the Trump brothers Eric and Don Jr. embarked on a world tour to make real estate deals while the administration used the threat of tariffs to push Starlink into other countries. Trump allies engaged in price fixing and fraud were given a pass seemingly as a reward for their donations to the president, our retirement savings were placed under the eye of a greedy insurance executive, and consumer protections were targeted by House Republicans eager to find tax breaks for the rich.
THE TRUMP FAMILY BUSINESSES
- Trump Rewarded Price Fixers Who Financed His Campaign. Two oil execs caught colluding with oil cartel OPEC to artificially inflate prices are set to make a comeback thanks to their generous donations to Trump’s political campaigns. As reported by The Lever, CEOs Scott Sheffield (Pioneer Oil) and John Hess (Hess Oil) were barred from joining the boards of Exxon and Chevron after the Biden-FTC found they had colluded to keep oil supply low to keep prices high. But in April, Trump’s FTC chair took the first steps to roll back those restrictions. Conveniently, both men have been contributors to Trump campaigns. Sheffield and his son have donated millions to Trump and GOP politics, and Hess funneled $1 million to Trump through his company, earning him a spot on a post-pandemic economic council.
While the economic benefit to Trump here may be less than some of the items below, the potential political implications of getting elected to lower prices generally, including gasoline specifically, and rewarding apparent oil price fixing would be enormous if America had a functioning political opposition. Admittedly, that’s quite a big “if” for the party of Schumer and Jeffries.
- $20M Trump Token Bribe? Freight Technologies, a modest trucking and logistics company, announced plans to invest $20 million in Trump Token, directly enriching Trump and his family. It’s a desperate and shockingly explicit financial Hail Mary as the company’s business of trucking goods across the U.S.-Mexico borders comes under threat from Trump’s wild tariffs. It amounts to a bribe to keep Freight Tech alive, a tactic we may see more of as Trump’s tariffs hurt business’s bottom line and the economy.
- From White House to the Penthouse. Last week, New York Time’s David Yaffe-Bellany reported on a $2 billion business deal involving Trump’s crypto business World Liberty Financial, Binance, and Abu-Dhabi backed investment firm MGX. This week, he and Eric Lipton followed up with a look into the money-making ventures of Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr., who’ve been busy cashing in on their father’s name and political clout. The Trump brothers are leveraging their dad’s White House tenure to land deals across the globe, including a luxury hotel in Dubai, a high-end residential tower in Saudi Arabia, and a new golf complex in Qatar. While it’s his kids who’re spearheading these efforts, the real estate deals will directly benefit Trump himself.
Don Jr. took the family grift tour to Europe as well. In Hungary, he shopped for business deals as he mingled with business leaders at a paid speaking gig and met with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. In Serbia, he met with President Aleksandar Vucic, just as the Serbian government greenlit a new hotel on government-owned land (brother-in-law Jared Kushner is the developer). Don Jr. made his final European stop in Bulgaria, where he appeared on stage with Antoni Trenchev, founder of Nexo, a crypto firm fined $45 million by the SEC in 2023 and banned from the U.S. marketplace. Trenchev used the moment to announce Nexo’s return to the American market after talks with U.S. regulators.
MUSK AND DOGE
- Don’t Want Tariffs? Buy Starlink. The Washington Post reported that the State Department is pushing countries to adopt Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service as foreign leaders wade through trade negotiations under Trump’s tariff shakedown. Internal memos obtained by the Post show that U.S. embassies and State personnel have been instructed to clear red tape for satellite companies, particularly Starlink. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has personally signed off on some of these memos.
Take Lesotho: Musk had been trying to break into the market, but it was not until Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on the country that the nation’s leaders awarded Starlink a contract. One memo put it bluntly: “As the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses.” Since the tariffs were announced, several other countries across Africa and Asia have inked deals with Starlink, hoping those deals will buy them relief from Trump’s trade war.
- Government AI is Good Business for AI Companies. Wired recently reported that one of Elon Musk’s DOGE-bros is recruiting to staff a project to replace tens of thousands of federal workers with AI. Anthony Jansco, a Palantir alum, told 2000 former colleagues in a Slack channel that over 300 roles were identified for “full-process standardization” through AI agents. Interestingly (and perhaps unsurprisingly) Jansco just happens to be the founder of AccelerateX, a startup whose single page website touts its “Secure AI Agents for Government.” Any bets on who’ll be awarded the government contract?
- $750,000 Conflict of Interest. Last week’s Corruption Calendar included a ProPublica investigation into the conflicts of interest surrounding DOGE-bro Gavin Kliger’s work at downsizing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). This week, ProPublica revealed that ethics lawyers explicitly warned Kliger not to take actions that could benefit him personally. He responded by helping fire those same lawyers, and dozens of others, in the mass layoffs at the agency. Turns out the $365,000 of stock we already knew about was just the tip of the iceberg. Further investigation shows Kliger holds an additional $350,000 in Alphabet Inc., Berkshire Hathaway, and Alibaba, all companies on the CFPB’s Prohibited Holdings list, meant to prevent exactly this kind of grift.
AROUND AND AROUND THE REVOLVING DOOR GOES
- Former Army Contractor Now Overseeing Army Contracts. Michael Obadal, a former Army officer and Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of the Army, plans to keep his stock in defense contractor Anduril while he serves in the Pentagon. Obadal says that he’ll forfeit his unvested options, but he’s hanging on to his vested options (i.e. the stock he already owns). The company has become three times as valuable since Obadal joined in 2023, stacking up multiple military contracts, including a $22 billion program to design augmented reality goggles for soldiers.
- Lobby Shops Have The Trump Team On Speed Dial. Several lobbyists-turned-top Trump administration officials are reportedly being lobbied by the lobbying firms they once lobbied for. David Moore reported in Sludge that the former employers of Attorney General Pam Bondi, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles have lobbied their respective offices in the early months of the new administration. Ballard Partners, where Bondi worked in 2019 lobbying the DOJ for Amazon, is back lobbying the DOJ in 2025. BGR Government Affairs, where Duffy worked in 2020 representing Enterprise Products, is now lobbying his office on behalf of the same client. Wiles’ former firm has been engaging the administration on behalf of clients Swisher International and General Motors. They’re not alone: VA Secretary Doug Collins and U.S. Trade rep Jamieson Greer both face scrutiny for their past lobbying activities.
BREAKING RETIREMENT NEST EGGS TO MAKE BILLIONAIRE OMELETTES
- DOGE Cashes In on Your Retirement Benefits. Rolling Stone reported that DOGE agent Antonio Gracias is in a prime position to receive a windfall from his efforts at the Social Security Administration. Gracias has been quietly working at the SSA since early February, chipping away at the agency from the inside. He and the rest of DOGE have overseen firings, office closures, and the transformation of the benefits process into something so convoluted that benefits are significantly delayed, if they’re even received at all. To the casual observer, it might look like bureaucratic dysfunction. But behind the chaos, Gracias stands to make millions from privatization schemes that could emerge if the agency is reduced to a husk. His private equity firm, Valor Equity, has already pulled $1.7 billion from state and local pensions funds over the past decade. If Social Security is handed over to private interests like his, that number will likely balloon as management of these benefits are removed from public oversight.
- Retiring Your Retirement Benefits. The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) is a division housed within the Department of Labor responsible for safeguarding the retirement and benefits accounts of more than 150 million Americans from fraud and mismanagement. So naturally, in keeping with the spirit of this administration, Trump’s nominee to lead the office is Daniel Aronowitz, an insurance exec with a vendetta against the very kinds of legal action the ESBA takes against companies like his. As head of the ESBA, Aronowitz would likely defang its enforcement capacity. Weak oversight means fewer lawsuits against firms like Encore, the insurance company Aronowitz founded. Fewer lawsuits mean fewer payouts, which means less money for retirees. Simple math. It wouldn’t even be his first attempt at lining his pockets with Americans retirement savings: he filed a Supreme Court amicus brief arguing workers didn’t have standing to sue their employer for the mismanagement of their retirement funds.
GAMBLING ON DEMOCRACY
- Bet on Horses, Sports… and Elections. Betting platform KalshiEx won big this week when the CFTC dropped its appeal of a federal court ruling allowing the company to take bets on the outcome of U.S. elections. The site, which lets users place bets on anything from sports to the weather to who will be the next Pope, booked over $7 million in contracts on the outcome of last year’s presidential election. The decision to drop the appeal was met with sharp criticism from Better Markets’ legal director Stephen Hall, who wrote that permitting election betting “threatens the integrity of our federal elections, promises a new wave of market manipulation and investor losses,” and stretches the CFTC’s modest resource as it takes on the role of election supervisor. This new gamble on democracy is also a victory for the Trump family. KalshiEx conveniently added Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic advisor this past January.
See more: The CFTC Ponders Gambling on Democracy’s Future
GOP CUTS CFPB FUNDING TO PAVE WAY FOR TAX BREAKS
- House Republicans on the Financial Services Committee voted to cut funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, folding it into the SEC. The cuts entirely defund the CFPB teams that respond to financial services outages and fight junk fees that hit consumers when the systems go down. GOP lawmakers are making these cuts in order to justify the proposed tax breaks that would enrich Trump, Musk, and their allies at the expense of everyday Americans.
Major resources update this week include:
Tracking Food and Drug Safety During the Trump Administration, our latest tracker monitoring the impacts of the Trump administration’s cuts and staffing reductions to the agencies responsible for our food and drug safety.
Aviation Disasters And Trump Administration Attacks On Air Safety tracks the cuts to aviation safety agencies and aviation disasters that occur during the Trump administration.
For more on our work tracking the Trump-Musk administration, visit DogeWatch.
And if you’ve got any tips on DOGE personnel, updates to any of our Trump-Musk Admin trackers, or companies seeking exemptions from Trump’s tariffs? Reach out to us at [email protected].