June 30, 2021
Blog Post Climate and EnvironmentEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchRevolving DoorTreasury Department
Amid Climate Crisis, Biden Stacks Administration With Fossil Fuel Industry Allies
President Biden has hired several Big Oil consultants and insiders to staff the executive branch amid growing calls for federal climate action.
June 09, 2021
One Shockingly Easy Step For Government Transparency: Staff Pages
Anyone who’s ever filed a Freedom of Information Act request can tell you that the federal bureaucracy is shockingly opaque despite. This has real consequences for the public’s understanding of what their government actually does every day. Almost all public records requests require watchdogs to specifically identify documents and personnel they are interested in, often without knowing if those documents even exist or if those personnel even still work for the government. This poses a conundrum, however: how can watchdogs know what or whose records to request if they don’t even know who works in a department?
May 27, 2021 | The American Prospect
Justice Department Shot Through With Corporate Influence
The U.S. government is involved in hundreds of court cases each year, most of which are not followed closely. But the baseline assumption is that the government is defending the public interest and holding criminals accountable, even when most aren’t watching. Unfortunately, in Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, that is not uniformly the case. Key acting officials, drawn from the halls of corporate power, are riddled with conflicts of interest that are already affecting their ability to protect the public. If the Justice Department is to serve all Americans rather than bolster individual fortunes and entrench corporate power, Merrick Garland must stop elevating corporate attorneys who have gotten rich fighting on corporate America’s behalf.
May 21, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Brian Netter
Brian Netter, a corporate attorney who represented big business in wage theft cases and litigated against workers who sued companies for mismanaging their retirement funds, was just appointed to the Department of Justice.
May 18, 2021
Executive Branch Financial Disclosures
The Revolving Door Project will be tracking these disclosures and flagging important revelations revealed by the OGE to ensure high level political appointees are not financially beholden to special interests they may regulate in government.
May 13, 2021
The Difference Between Public Interest And Corporate Lobbyists
Representatives of corporate interests often twist the spirit and the intent behind calls for ethics in government. Under the guise of keeping lobbyists out of an administration, big business rails against even the suggestion that working people get a voice in government. They do this by falsely conflating public interest lobbyists and corporate lobbyists.
May 13, 2021 | The American Prospect
Max Moran Dorothy Slater Zena Wolf
Op-Ed 2020 Election/TransitionClimate and EnvironmentEthics in GovernmentFinancial Regulation
Plumbing The Depths At The SEC
Progressives have generally seen Gary Gensler, the newly confirmed chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as a loyal advocate for the public interest. His tenure at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was one of the few bright spots in Barack Obama’s financial regulatory regime. But in April, Gensler named Alex Oh to be his director of enforcement, before she resigned a week later amid negative media attention. Before joining the SEC, Oh had directly facilitated an ExxonMobil executive’s obstinate deposition testimony (reportedly read off an attorney-drafted script) in the face of plaintiff objections—and the case itself centered on accusations of torture, rape, and murder by ExxonMobil-hired guards in an Indonesian village.
April 22, 2021
Delaware Connections Run Deep As DuPont Family's Darla Pomeroy Heads To Treasury
Darla Pomeroy, who is married to an heir to the DuPont family fortune, was just named Senior Advisor to the Office of Domestic Finance at the US Treasury. While her record does not show any familiarity with financial regulatory policy, it reveals instead a history of a powerful corporation highly influential in Delaware placing a close ally in the administration.
April 08, 2021
Blog Post CabinetDepartment of JusticeEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchRevolving DoorRight-Wing MediaTreasury Department
Biden Cabinet Confirmations Show Continued Political Potency Of Revolving Door Critiques
The prolonged confirmation fights for top Biden nominees proved one thing: Republicans will gleefully and cynically exploit anti-corruption critiques of Biden’s Cabinet for their own political purposes. The President must deny them this potent political weapon by closing corporate America’s revolving door for good.
April 05, 2021
Financial Disclosures Reveal Fossil Fuel Industry’s Pipeline To The White House
Financial disclosures reveal over a dozen senior White House officials’ financial and career ties to fossil fuel companies, pipelines, and natural gas industries.
March 29, 2021
White House Personal Financial Disclosures
The Revolving Door Project has been requesting personal financial disclosures, or Form 278e’s, since the White House made them available. While we are still waiting to receive many requests back, we wanted to share the ones we have received with the public as quickly as possible by summarizing relevant findings for each White House appointee.
March 29, 2021
Pharma In The White House: Financial Disclosures Reveal Officials' Stake In Vaccine Manufacturers
Financial disclosures revealed that numerous high level Biden White House officials have financial holdings in vaccine manufacturers, while some of them are involved in vaccine distribution talks.
March 29, 2021 | The American Prospect
Toward a Conflict-of-Interest-Free West Wing
The latest batch of White House financial disclosures revealed close ties between top Biden Administration officials and corporate titans in Big Tech, Big Oil, and Big Pharma. Eleanor Eagan and Elias Alsbergas explain why these disclosures reveal the need for the Biden White House to adopt stronger ethics disclosures and mandate total divestment from potential conflicts of interest.
March 22, 2021
Keystone XL Investor Susan Rice Has Kept Up Her Fossil Fuel Investments — And Now Oversees Tribal Relations Across The Executive Branch
Having a pollution investor in charge of the DPC should set off alarm bells for anyone worried about climate change — in other words, everyone.
March 15, 2021 | Independent Media Institute
When Public Officials Get Rented Out By Corporate Power, The People Lose
From Vivek Murthy’s lucrative consulting work with Netflix and Carnival Cruise Lines to Brian Deese’s “greenwashing” of fossil fuel investments at BlackRock, the revolving door between corporate industry and government continues to undermine public trust in the Biden Administration, writes our Elias Alsbergas.