Politics

Lobbying firms tied to Trump report wave of new clients

Published

1 year ago

January 29, 2025

Lobbying firms with close ties to President Donald Trump have added new clients in droves since the election, with several disclosing close to two dozen so far, as companies, industry groups and other organizations look for an in with the new administration. Some of the biggest winners have been firms whose owners have helped Trump from outside of the government, such as fundraiser Brian Ballard, or whose current or former employees have more formal ties to the administration, according to a Blue Light News analysis of disclosures.

Those disclosures almost certainty undercount the actual boom in business for lobbying shops viewed as close to Trump. It’s not necessarily required to report outreach to presidential transition teams, for example. Lobbyists also have 45 days to disclose new clients once they’ve been retained, meaning that a fuller picture of who’s rushing to hire Trump-linked lobbyists — and how much they’re shelling out to do so — may not be available until first-quarter reports are due in April.

The election kicked off a familiar cycle in the lobbying industry, in which some K Street players see their fortunes rise as their links to the new government bring in business, while several firms that saw similar boosts four years ago have seen lobbying revenues dip.

While many of K Street’s biggest players reported surging lobbying revenues in 2024, those upticks were especially pronounced among firms with ties to the incoming president. So far, perhaps no firm has reaped more benefits from Trump’s election than Ballard’s Ballard Partners, which counts two key members of Trump’s second administration — chief of staff Susie Wiles and attorney general-designate Pam Bondi — as alums.

And after a lag in business during the Biden administration, Ballard Partners has disclosed a remarkable 41 new clients since the election, including Paramount Studios, Bayer, Chevron, Harvard University and the crypto firms Blockchain.com and Ripple Labs.

In the final three months of 2024, Ballard’s lobbying revenues were up by 31 percent compared to the previous quarter. Its Q4 revenues were up 38 percent year-over-year, and the firm’s annual lobbying revenues rose from $17.7 million in 2023 to $19.6 million in 2024 — an increase of 11 percent.

Another major beneficiary of Trump’s win so far has been Miller Strategies, whose founder Jeff Miller served as one of the finance chairs for Trump’s inauguration.

Miller Strategies has reported signing 21 new clients since the election, including the Edison Electric Institute, Uber, Ebay and Palantir — growing the firm’s client list by a third. The firm pulled in $4 million in the final quarter of 2024, a 37 percent bump from the previous quarter and a 36 percent increase from the same time a year ago.

Mercury Public Affairs, where Wiles most recently served as co-chair, has disclosed 16 new lobbying clients since the election — a half-dozen of which name Bryan Lanza, a Trump adviser and transition alum, as working on the account.

Mercury reported $11.8 million in lobbying revenue last year, a more than $4 million increase compared to 2023. The firm’s fourth-quarter revenue of $2.6 million was down a little over 7 percent from the previous quarter, but marked a 26 percent increase from the same period in 2023 — and that doesn’t include new foreign clients that Mercury has added since November, such as the South Korean government.

Continental Strategy has also seen a boom in new clients. Trump adviser Carlos Trujillo launched the firm just as Trump was leaving office in 2021 and has staffed up with a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the former deputy political director of Trump’s campaign, while also announcing a promotion for Wiles’ daughter Katie Wiles.

Since the election, Continental has signed 14 new clients, including Hims & Hers, the Geo Group and Google Cloud. The firm has yet to file all of the fourth-quarter lobbying disclosures that were due last week, but already has reported nearly $1.2 million in lobbying revenue for 2024 — a 35 percent jump from 2023 — while its quarterly revenue nearly doubled from $196,000 in Q3 to $373,000 in Q4.

CGCN Group, an all-Republican firm, has also seen an uptick in business. Its staff includes former Trump White House aides Tim Pataki, Ja’Ron Smith and Mike Catanzaro. The firm brought in $9.7 million in lobbying revenue in 2024 — up 28 percent from the previous year — and $2.6 million in the last quarter of 2024 — up 30 percent year-over-year.

As good as Trump’s election has been for firms on K Street with ties to the new administration, a handful of firms linked to former President Joe Biden have started bleeding business, according to Blue Light News’s analysis of disclosures.

Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of top Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti, saw lobbying revenues surge for his firm Ricchetti Inc. overall last year, as well as in Q4. With Biden on his way out of office, though, Ricchetti’s firm parted ways with six of its clients, while disclosing no new clients since the election.

At Putala Strategies, a firm run by Chris Putala, a former aide to Biden from his time on the Senate Judiciary Committee, annual and quarterly lobbying revenues also declined. Like Ricchetti, Putala’s firm has reported no new clients since the election and lost seven clients at the end of last year.

On the flip side, TheGROUP DC, which is home to Biden’s former vice presidential legislative affairs director and plenty of former aides to Democratic heavy hitters, reported a 10 percent increase in lobbying revenues last year.

The firm, which has also added a number of Republican lobbyists in recent years, reported steady lobbying revenues for Q4 compared to the previous quarter as well as the same period in 2023, and has registered four new clients since the election.

Politics

DC is about to pick new leaders. Trump is watching.

Published

9 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Washington will soon enter a new chapter after voters pick the capital’s first new mayor in a dozen years and its first new Congressional delegate since 1991. And no matter who wins Tuesday’s primaries, they’ll be on a collision course with President Donald Trump.

The frontrunners in both races have hinged their campaigns on opposition to Trump, who since returning to office has chipped away at Washington’s autonomy and sought to remake parts of the city in his image. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has led the city since taking office in 2015, has taken a pragmatic approach to working with the president in an apparent effort to avoid further furor. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has represented the District since 1991 and condemned Trump’s actions in strongly worded statements, but the 89-year-old has dodged the spotlight amid questions about her acuity and ability to serve.

The candidates running to replace them say that’s far from enough.

In interviews with Blue Light News, those leading candidates emphasized that they hoped to find common ground with the Trump administration and coordinate where possible, especially on projects that could jumpstart Washington’s sluggish economy. But they all drew a red line at Trump’s extraordinary law enforcement actions, including sending in the National Guard indefinitely and surging federal immigration agents in coordination with local police.

“Washington, D.C., residents want and deserve a mayor who’s going to stand up and fight back, and that’s what I’m bringing,” said Kenyan McDuffie, a relatively moderate, pro-business former D.C. Council member who is polling second in the mayor’s race. He has pledged to end coordination between the Metropolitan Police Department and ICE on his first day in office.

Janeese Lewis George, a D.C. council member who is polling more than 10 points ahead of McDuffie, has taken an even more adversarial posture against the president. She told Blue Light News she would “actively tell our employees to resist” if Trump again federalized the MPD, adding that she would work with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb “to defend D.C.”

Trump is already making known his displeasure — particularly with Lewis George, a democratic socialist whose platform and campaign are reminiscent of those of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Asked last week about the possibility of Lewis George winning the primary, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I wouldn’t like it.”

“Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis,” he continued. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”

Lewis George’s campaign almost immediately cut Trump’s comments into an ad. “Look, we’re not going to get ICE off our streets by fearing this president,” she said in response. “We’re not going to protect our rights, or Home Rule, by complying in advance. Threatening Home Rule because you don’t like how residents are voting is an attack on democracy itself. The people of D.C. elect their mayor, and they want someone who’s gonna stand up to Donald Trump.”

There’s a similar sentiment among the leading delegate candidates.

Robert White, a city council member and one of two frontrunners in the delegate race, described Trump’s surge of federal agents and National Guard troops to the city as “lawlessness” and “the opposite of public safety.” He said he would seek to build a coalition in Congress to “push back in every way.”

Brooke Pinto, a fellow council member and the other delegate frontrunner who has centered public safety in her campaign, said the administration’s use of National Guard troops and ICE agents have not helped the city. “While I am very committed to advancing public safety in the District of Columbia, what we’re seeing from the Trump administration undermines those efforts,” she said.

That type of messaging is politically savvy in a city with an electorate that heavily supported Kamala Harris in 2024 and whose lives have been directly impacted by the president’s grip over Washington — from the troop surge to his sweeping cuts to government programs and razing of the federal workforce, which have severely contracted the District’s economy. That’s not to mention his efforts to splash his name and face across federal buildings, and mounting moves to beautify portions of the city and stand up ambitious architectural projects.

“When politicians try to interfere with our local public safety, when they are sweeping up unhoused residents, cutting jobs, when they are pushing policies that negatively affect our local economy and driving up overall costs of everything from gas to housing, I’m going to fight back,” McDuffie said.

But it sets the candidates — whoever wins — in explicit opposition to Trump, who has consistently sought to bring his enemies to heel whenever he gets the chance. The president has several levers at his disposal if he chooses to retaliate against Washington, from another federal law enforcement surge to using his influence over Congress to weaken D.C. Home Rule. The city also depends on the federal government for high-profile projects that would improve public spaces and bring jobs to the District, including upgrades to Union Station and the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus.

Asked how the White House is preparing for a potentially more adversarial mayor and delegate, a spokesperson referred Blue Light News back to Trump’s Oval Office comments.

Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s Playbook newsletter.