During his first campaign for office, President Donald Trump vowed to drain the swamp, but the cottage industry profiting off proximity to power, not to mention the revolving door between the federal government and lobbying industry, appears to remain alive and well in the second year of his second term.
The reported surge in the Trump family’s own worth, linked to cryptocurrency investments, has received close coverage over the past 16 months. Meanwhile, prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, where users can place bets on political outcomes, have surged in popularity in recent years. These platforms have been rife with accusations of insider trading, prompting federal investigations. And to top it all off, Congress has failed to send a bill to the president’s desk banning lawmakers from trading stocks, despite broad bipartisan appeal and a promise from Trump himself to sign a bill into law.
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Furthermore, an analysis by the Campaign Legal Center found that, in his second term, Trump has nominated 47 lobbyists to serve in high-ranking administration posts, with many already having been confirmed by the Senate. CLC notes that, based on past ethics standards, 16 of those administration officials would have been barred from taking their government jobs, as they were at agencies that they’d directly lobbied before joining the Trump administration.
CLC also found that 35 corporate lobbyists have failed to report donations to four Trump projects, an apparent violation of federal lobbying law. These projects include the president’s White House ballroom, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts renovation, the nonprofit group overseeing Trump’s presidential library in Florida, and Freedom 250, the organization overseeing plans for America’s 250th Independence Day celebrations this summer. CLC has filed an ethics complaint with the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia seeking an investigation into those donations.
During his first term, Trump, like former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, established an ethics rule barring the hiring of lobbyists to federal departments and agencies they’d lobbied in the past two years, but the president did not reestablish those rules in his second term.
The White House told the Washington Examiner all administration hires, including former lobbyists, are required to comply with conflicts of interest statutes, and that “any former lobbyist appointed by the President is required to file a public financial disclosure report, which is screened by ethics officials for potential conflicts of interest.”
“The only special interest guiding the Trump Administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.
ProPublica found that, halfway through the first Trump administration, nearly 300 lobbyists had been hired to government jobs. The total number of lobbyists working in the second Trump administration, whether or not their jobs required Senate confirmation, remains unknown.
And Trump is hardly the only modern president to fail to shut down the government-interest group pipeline. Obama, who famously vowed to close the “revolving door,” had hired more than 100 lobbyists to work in the government by the time his second term had ended. Biden, who made a similar promise, staffed his presidential transition team with some 40 lobbyists back in 2020.
“I think what you’re seeing happen here is that it’s truly difficult to change how Washington operates,” one senior Trump 1.0 official-turned-lobbyist told the Washington Examiner. “Most high-ranking government officials are taking a massive pay cut to work for the government, and once you get out, you’re going to try to make as much money as possible. On the other hand, this is a much smaller town than most people think. The pool of potential hires the president has to choose from, especially if he wants his agenda implemented effectively, simply isn’t very deep.”
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Whatever the reasons behind Trump’s personnel decisions, the lobbying industry overall had a banner year in 2025, taking in $5 billion, an increase of 14% compared to 2024, according to Open Secrets.
The Washington Post reported in October 2025 that the six lobbying shops that saw the biggest uptick in business were all closely tied to Trumpworld, none more so than Ballard Partners, where White House chief of staff Susie Wiles previously worked.
