A senior White House energy adviser who spent months publicly championing an offshore oil company's pipeline has now taken a top policy job at that same company, a move ethics experts say exposes just how thin the Trump administration's revolving-door protections have become.
Brittany Kelm, formerly a senior energy adviser at the White House's National Energy Dominance Council, announced her departure last week to become vice president of policy and commercial at Sable Offshore Corp, reported Politico.
In June, Kelm toured Sable's Santa Barbara, California, facilities wearing company-branded gear, later posting on LinkedIn: "We've unleashed California's offshore oil production!" Less than three months later, she was on Sable's payroll.
The company's pipeline, idle since a 2015 spill, faced fierce opposition from California regulators until the administration intervened, seizing oversight from the state and invoking emergency powers to order production restarted in March. Throughout, Kelm and top officials, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and council executive director Jarrod Agen, publicly credited her work for keeping the project alive despite lawsuits from California's attorney general.
Ethics experts say that trajectory raises serious concerns. Federal law imposes a lifetime ban on former officials lobbying on matters they were "personally and substantially" involved in, plus a one-year ban on contacting their former agency. Davina Hurt of Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics said the "distance between an official's public responsibilities and the private employment" here is dangerously thin, calling it a matter with "red flashing lights."
Complicating matters further, the Trump administration currently operates under the weakest revolving-door restrictions of any White House in 15 years, having rescinded a Biden-era ethics order without replacing it. Only underlying criminal statutes still apply, and experts say enforcement hinges on exactly when Kelm began job talks with Sable and what she was still working on at the time.
The White House maintains Kelm did not work on "official" matters with Sable while negotiating her new job and says she won't touch "ongoing official matters" between the company and the administration going forward. Spokesperson Taylor Rogers called suggestions of a conflict "irresponsible."
However, critics aren't convinced. California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office branded the energy council a "taxpayer-funded lobbying shop for the fossil fuel industry," while one oil industry executive told reporters the revolving door has rarely been "so brazen."
Kelm has since also touted her council work on Venezuela's oil sector, attending a contract-signing ceremony for that country's state oil company just days after leaving government.