President Biden's top domestic policy aide has more than tripled her wealth since leaving government four years ago, reporting between $36 million and $149 million in new disclosures that detail the ties between top administration officials and major corporations.
In a newly available, 28-page disclosure form, Susan Rice detailed assets 3 to 4 times the amount she reported upon joining the Obama administration in 2009, with assets then between $13 million and more than $40 million. Rice, who was former President Barack Obama's United Nations ambassador, later disclosed similar amounts when she became national security adviser during Obama's second term.
REVOLVING DOOR: TOP BIDEN AIDES CASHED IN ADVISING MAJOR CORPORATIONS
Her newest filing lists shares in major technology and healthcare firms, including Johnson & Johnson, Apple, and Microsoft, of between $250,000 and $5 million. She exercised more than $300,000 in stock options with Netflix, where she served as a board member before returning to government.
Rice earned more than $600,000 in speaking fees last year from companies, universities, and professional organizations, including Salesforce, media firm Arizent, investment partnership Neuberger Berman, and Latham and Watkins, a law firm.
Melinda Gates's Pivotal Ventures paid Rice $10,000 for a speaking engagement, along with nearly $50,000 from A&E Networks for participating in HISTORYTalks and $81,000 from an organization listed as the "Cambridge Speakers Series."
Rice also holds between $1 million to $5 million of stock in Enbridge, a Canadian multinational energy company, and between $5 million and $25 million each of Canadian Pacific Rail, Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto-Dominion Bank stock.
Rice is one of several prominent Biden advisers with close ties to Big Tech and other corporate firms who drew significant payouts in their time outside of government, as detailed by disclosures for White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeffrey Zients, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, staff secretary Jessica Hertz, press secretary Jen Psaki, and deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon.
Zients, who twice served as Office of Management and Budget director under Obama, is a former Facebook board member and the wealthiest Biden administration official, according to his disclosure.
He reported between $89 million and more than $442 million in assets across investment funds, real estate, and income, including from the Cranemere Group, his London-based private equity firm, where he had a combined salary and bonus of $1.6 million. Zients has pledged to divest from Cranemere, as well as from $1 million worth of Facebook shares.
Among the assets listed in his disclosure are gold bars valued between $1 million and $5 million and gold shares between $5 million and $25 million.
Before becoming the head of Biden's National Economic Council, Deese led Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, where his salary and bonuses totaled more than $2.3 million.
Sullivan was a senior partner at the consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners, where he earned $135,000 in fees, and until last year was a member of a Microsoft advisory council, earning an additional $45,000.
According to Sullivan's filing, this work involved “advising the president of Microsoft on key policy developments.”
White House staff secretary Jessica Hertz, a former associate general counsel for Facebook's regulatory team and company director, earned $780,000 in salary from the tech giant last year, from which she also divested between $100,000 and $1 million.
As the Biden-Harris transition ethics czar, Hertz was paid $98,654 and received $20,000 in salary from Columbia University last year for her work as a lecturer in law, according to her form.
She was Biden's principal deputy counsel under Obama, where she oversaw “a wide range of government inquiries and regulatory investigations," according to a Columbia Law School biography that has since been removed.
A Columbia University public affairs official sought to distance the school from Hertz last November, telling the Washington Examiner in an email that Hertz was no longer affiliated with the university and said she had not taught at the school since 2019.
Psaki is one of several top administration officials who joined corporate consultancies after former President Donald Trump took office.
Psaki began working at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace alongside Biden's CIA director, William Burns, in September 2017, the same month that she joined WestExec Advisors, a consultancy founded in part by now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Michele Flournoy, Obama's undersecretary of defense for policy, and at one time, a leading candidate to be Biden's defense secretary. Under Obama, Psaki was a top White House official, leading the communications office.
Income from her own firm, Evergreen Consulting, totaled nearly $600,000.
Psaki reported earning more than $5,000 for work as a CNN contributor, for communications services to tech company Lyft, and as a crisis communications consultant advising AnyVision, an Israeli facial recognition technology firm accused of powering a mass surveillance program in the West Bank.
While working at Precision Strategies, Biden's deputy chief of staff, O'Malley Dillon, advised the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic group, as well as Gates Ventures, Bill Gates's private investment firm focused on clean energy, education technology, and healthcare.
O'Malley Dillon also advised Lyft and the Rambourg Foundation, a philanthropic organization led by French-Tunisian activist and politician Olfa Terras.
The West Wing delayed disclosing Rice and other top officials' financial reports for weeks, skirting up to the 30-day limit of a federal rule on sharing financial disclosures in its possession and leaving good governance advocates wondering what to make of Biden's campaign pledge to increase transparency.
Not all White House disclosures go to Office of Government Ethics, which publishes available filings online under the Ethics in Government Act, leaving each White House to set up its own system for staff filings that don't go through the office.
"The logistical challenge is that each White House has to stand up its operations from scratch," said Walter Shaub of the Project on Government Oversight. "This time, it appears to have taken until March 19 to set up the online portal to request reports and similarly took until March 31 in the Trump administration."
Shaub, a former OGE director under Obama, said his group had requested filings early into the administration.
The delay "was frustrating, though I guess not entirely surprising given the logistical challenges," he said.
While on the campaign trail, Biden had vowed to create a public database of ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance records with “a new one-stop website.” Upon Biden taking office, the White House requested a monthlong extension to the 30-day rule before revealing a new webpage to submit individual requests for financial disclosures late last week.
In a statement, the White House credited the "broad and diverse" experience of Biden's top advisers, including in the private sector.
"They have returned to government because of their deep commitment to public service, their desire to help bring our nation out of this time of crisis, and their strong belief that government can work for the American people," the White House said.
Some close advisers are exempt from having to submit financial disclosures.
Senior adviser Anita Dunn, a political strategist who was chief strategist for the president's campaign, was still advising telecommunications firm AT&T through July last year, according to the New York Times.
Dunn's communications firm SKDK has previously advised the Canadian company that developed the Keystone XL pipeline, an airline advocacy group, and an Israeli spyware firm. Political clients have included Obama and Biden, as well as Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, and others.
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Responding to a request filed by the Washington Examiner, the White House said Dunn "is not required to file a 278 and thus there are no documents responsive to your request."
