Trump placed 'for sale' sign on White House with chief of staff pick: watchdog

A government watchdog group said Friday that President-elect Donald Trump has effectively signaled that the incoming administration is open for business by choosing longtime Republican strategist Susie Wiles—a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry and other sordid interests—as his White House chief of staff.

In a new report, Public Citizen shows that Wiles represented at least 42 clients as a registered federal government lobbyist between 2017 and 2024—corporate influence-peddling that continued even while she helped run Trump's 2024 presidential bid.

Among Wiles' clients, according to the watchdog group, were:

• A waste management company that has resisted removing nuclear waste from its radioactive landfill;
• A foreign copper and gold mining company that wants to eliminate federal opposition to its plan to dig a massive mine in a pristine watershed;
• A tobacco company that sought to block federal health restrictions on its candy-flavored cigars, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found are attractive to kids;
• A foreign news company whose owner has been indicted for money laundering; and
• A foreign mining private equity firm seeking approval to develop an open-pit leach gold mine on federal public lands.

"By putting a corporate lobbyist in charge of his administration with his first act as president-elect, Trump is hanging a 'For Sale' sign on the front door of the White House," Jon Golinger, a democracy advocate at Public Citizen and author of the new report. "A lobbyist with this record of controversial representation and a minefield of potential conflicts of interest should not go near the Oval Office, much less be White House chief of staff."

White House chief of staff is a powerful position that does not require Senate approval. In the role, Wiles will control the flow of information and those who have access to the president as well as manage White House personnel.

Trump's selection of Wiles flies in the face of his previous pledge to "drain the swamp" and recent criticism of the disproportionate influence lobbyists wield in Washington, D.C.

"They're making a lot of money, absolutely," Trump acknowledged in an August appearance on the "This Past Weekend" podcast with comedian Theo Von. "One way you could stop it is to say if you're going to go into government, you can never be a lobbyist."

"You have to stop listening to lobbyists," Trump said. "You know, I was not a big person for lobbyists."

In fact, according toProPublica, the first Trump administration hired more than 280 lobbyists—one for every 14 political appointments.

The campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets reported in 2021 that Ballard Partners, Wiles' lobbying firm, "increased its revenue with each year of Trump’s presidency, peaking in 2020 with a $24.4 million haul."

Corporate influence inside the second Trump administration will likely be even stronger given the presence of Wiles and other figures such as Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a major beneficiary of government contracts. Earlier this week, Trump tapped Musk and biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead a commission tasked with recommending sweeping cuts to federal spending and regulations.

Public Citizen called Trump's decision to form such a commission and place Musk at its helm "the ultimate corporate corruption."

In its new report, the watchdog argued that a person with Wiles' lobbying history "should not be White House chief of staff."

But assuming she ultimately takes the position in January, Public Citizen called on Wiles to disclose details of her lobbying work, including "the names of the individuals she lobbied, what she asked those individuals to do or not to do, and what resulted from her lobbying"; recuse herself from "all decision-making involving her past lobbying clients and the federal agencies that are making decisions that affect her lobbying clients"; and agree not to lobby the federal government again after she leaves the White House.

"Wiles' lobbying client list is both extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House," Public Citizen said Friday. "This report's findings raise serious questions about potential conflicts of interest that need to be answered before Inauguration Day."