Revolving Door Project | The Corporations Winning Big Under Trump 2.0

Data brokers, private prison operators, and crypto companies are cleaning up.

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As we’ve been documenting every week of Trump 2.0 in our Corruption Calendar newsletter, the second Trump administration has been egregiously corrupt. Many key appointees, as well as Trump himself, have blatant conflicts of interest and are using their positions to enrich themselves and their friends. Indeed, Trump’s cabinet contains a historic number of billionaires. Every week, more news breaks on the way corporations and the wealthy are lining their pockets due to Trump’s policy decisions, at the expense of the rest of us.

Looking back on the first 27 weeks of Trump’s reign of corruption, some trends (and some particularly big winners) emerge. This week’s newsletter highlights a few of the corporations raking in profits for helping the Trump administration terrorize immigrants, expand the racist surveillance state, and mine taxpayer data for corporate profit. Our hope is that tracking these patterns of extraction and influence will support future efforts to hold these companies and their corrupt leadership accountable under a future administration which expects corporations to (at least pretend to) follow the law.

For each company, we’ll outline how they’re profiting from their connections to the Trump administration and how their profits are powered by endangering vulnerable people and communities. This list is certainly not comprehensive. For instance, the blatant corruption of Elon Musk’s many companies receiving contracts and direct promotion in front of the White House has been covered at length. But these are examples that deserve more attention as Trump’s authoritarian presidency unfolds.

1. Palantir

The Corporation

Palantir is a Peter Thiel-founded technology company that specializes in building tools that can process and analyze large datasets. A massive federal contract recipient, they’ve been called “the AI arms dealer of the 21st century” for selling technology to imperial powers, prominently the US Department of Homeland Security for use against undocumented people and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for use in its genocidal war on Gaza.

Most recently, as my colleague Jacob Plaza reported in June, there are reports that Palantir is “creating a comprehensive database of American’s sensitive government information [by] using a tool called Foundry to merge data across federal agencies, such as the Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service.”

The Connections

Palantir has deep ties to the Trump administration.

As I wrote in April, Palantir’s “massive grab at government data is being facilitated by DOGE, which features at least three Palantir alumni and a Thiel Fellow, at a Treasury Department helmed by Palantir investor Scott Bessent (the hedge fund Bessent founded is invested in Palantir), all under the authority of an administration featuring Vice President JD Vance, Peter Thiel’s personal pick for VP. The Palantir-connected DOGE agents in question are Clark Minor, Gregory Barbaccia, Akash Bobba, and Luke Farritor; see more on their DOGE work and their Palantir and Thiel connections in our DOGE Agent Profiles.”

In addition, prominent Trump allies own stock in the company. Last month, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported that Trump’s Deputy Chief of Homeland Security Stephen Miller disclosed owning over $100,000 worth of stock in Palantir. As I wrote then, “Miller’s policy decisions materially affect Palantir. This appears to be a significant conflict of interest, as Miller stands to personally gain from an uptick in contract awards for Palantir.” And in April, Trump supporter Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene came under fire for acquiring stock in Palantir just over a week before the company was awarded a $30 million deal with ICE.

If Palantir’s data projects—which stand to compile vast taxpayer datasets the company will no doubt mine and monetize—continue, Trump supporting members of the administration will continue to profit, as the rest of us have our privacy and rights violated.

2. GEO Group

The Corporation

GEO Group, helmed by millionaire George Zoley, is a private prison and immigrant detention contractor that operates private prison facilities across the country. As the Interceptreported last month, “GEO Group has doubled its stock value since Trump’s election,” with Zoley himself noting that Trump’s deportation push presented an “unprecedented opportunity” for the company to double its services.

The Connections

Zoley and GEO Group’s eagerness to profit off of terrorizing and incarcerating immigrants (keeping them in abusive and at times deadly conditions) is horrifying on its own. Their ties to the Trump administration make their influence particularly concerning.

As my colleague Andrea Beaty wrote earlier this month: “During the presidential primary, Geo Group’s PAC maxed out contributions to Trump’s campaign and “used a subsidiary to give an additional $500,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC.…” [Further,] Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Attorney General Pam Bondi were once on the payroll of GEO Group,” as a consultant and a lobbyist, respectively.

3. Coinbase

The Corporation

Coinbase is the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange. Its CEO Brian Armstrong spoke on the phone and met with Trump in the run-up to his inauguration, leading many commentators to speculate about what advice the newly pro-crypto Trump might take from Armstrong.

Financial advice publication Kiplinger recommended Coinbase as a strong investment under a Trump presidency, given CEO Armstrong’s coziness with Trump and Trump’s favorable crypto policymaking.

The Connections

Coinbase donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and has spent the past few months stacking well-connected political operatives onto its Global Advisory Council. As my colleague Henry Burke wrote last month, “Perhaps no single institution has purchased as much influence as Coinbase’s ‘Global Advisory Council,’ which has hired a bipartisan team to help advance the crypto giant’s goals.” These appointees include Chris LaCivita, the co-campaign manager of the Trump Vance 2024 run.

While Trump and his family’s own ventures into the cryptocurrency market—including egregiously corrupt events like his crypto gala, apparently designed to allow wealthy people to buy influence by enriching Trump and his family—are concerning, the policy decisions to enable large crypto companies like Coinbase to profit by defrauding consumers threaten an even wider impact.

As Common Cause writes:

“Without strong rules, the crypto world becomes a playground for scammers and billionaires. People who don’t have millions to throw around are more likely to lose their savings in risky coins or shady projects. When the market crashes – and it often does – it’s often everyday workers, not wealthy insiders, who are left with the damage. By removing guardrails, Trump is making it easier for his rich friends to cash out while the rest of us carry the risk.”

Trump’s core commitment to enabling his billionaire friends to scam and abuse people, as part of using the Presidency to grow his own net worth, is abundantly clear. While corporations have never been especially fond of following the law, the era of impunity Trump has ushered in is particularly abhorrent. Tracking and understanding the lines of influence at play in Trump’s policymaking and priorities is just one step to interrupting the harmful impact on people and communities, but we hope this work can support broader efforts at accountability longer term.

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