Web of financial conflicts across Trump admin exposed: 'Ethics is in the toilet'
Thousands of companies are jockeying for billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts to build a shield designed to intercept and destroy missiles launched against the United States.
But amid the intense competition, a handful of firms have an important inside connection.
At least four of the companies awarded contracts so far are owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm founded by billionaire Steve Feinberg, who until last year ran the company and is now the deputy secretary of defense — the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon.
Feinberg oversees the office in charge of the Golden Dome for America project, which is modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
Feinberg filed paperwork saying he divested from Cerberus and its related businesses. But his government ethics records contain an unusual clause: He is allowed to continue contracting with the company for tax compliance and accounting services as well as health care coverage, a financial relationship that documents show could continue indefinitely.
Feinberg’s financial statements and ethics agreement are part of a trove of nearly 3,200 disclosure records that ProPublica is making public today. The disclosures, which can be viewed in a searchable online tool, detail the finances of more than 1,500 federal officials appointed by President Donald Trump. Records for Trump and Vice President JD Vance are also included.
The documents reveal a web of financial ties between senior government officials and the industries they help regulate — relationships that have drawn scrutiny as Trump has dismantled ethics safeguards designed to prevent conflicts of interest.
On his first day back in office, Trump rescinded an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that required his appointees to comply with an ethics pledge. The pledge barred them from working on issues related to their former lobbying topics or clients for two years. Weeks later, Trump fired 17 inspectors general charged with investigating fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest across the federal government. Around the same time, he removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency that oversees ethics compliance throughout the executive branch. The office is currently without a head or a chief of staff.
Against that backdrop, ProPublica has, over the past year, used the disclosure records to investigate how personal financial interests have intersected with government decision-making inside the Trump administration.
The documents helped show that senior executive branch officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, made well-timed securities trades, at times selling stocks just before markets plunged because Trump announced new tariffs. (The officials either did not respond to requests for comment or said they had no insider information before they made their trades.)
Other disclosures revealed that two high-ranking scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who recently helped downgrade the agency’s assessment of the health risks of formaldehyde had previously held senior positions at the chemical industry’s leading trade group. (The EPA said the scientists had obtained ethics advice approving their work on the project.)
In December, ProPublica reported that Trump has appointed more than 200 people who collectively owned — either by themselves or with their spouses — between $175 million and $340 million in cryptocurrency investments at the time they filed their disclosures. Some of those appointees now hold positions overseeing or influencing regulation of the crypto industry. Among them is Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and now the second-highest-ranking official in the Justice Department.
Blanche’s disclosure records show that he owned at least $159,000 in crypto-related assets last year when he shut down investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges.
After ProPublica reported on Blanche’s actions, six Democratic senators accused him of a “glaring” conflict of interest, and a watchdog group asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate. A Justice Department spokesperson has said Blanche upholds the highest ethical standards and that his crypto orders were “appropriately flagged, addressed and cleared in advance,” but she did not respond to questions asking who had cleared his actions.
Conflicts of interest have long plagued both Democratic and Republican administrations. But ethics experts say Trump’s second term marks a sharp break from modern norms.
Trump has openly defended his family’s financial enrichment while he is in office, including through cryptocurrency deals that critics say allow investors, including foreign entities, to curry favor by boosting the president’s personal wealth.
“I found out nobody cared, and I’m allowed to,” Trump told The New York Times, referring to his family’s business dealings.
Trump also remains unapologetic about accepting a Boeing 747 worth about $400 million from the Qatari government and transferring nearly $1 billion from a nuclear weapons program to retrofit it. Virginia Canter, chief counsel for ethics and corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit governmental watchdog group, cited Trump’s new plane as a brazen example of self-dealing.
“Ethics is in the toilet,” said Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House, Treasury Department and Securities and Exchange Commission during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly defended the president and his appointees. “President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history,” Kelly said. “He has also nominated highly-qualified individuals across the Executive Branch who have a wide range of public and private sector backgrounds.”
The idea of a space-based missile defense shield has persisted ever since President Ronald Reagan proposed his own version nicknamed “Star Wars.”
Trump rekindled the idea on the campaign trail. His Golden Dome for America imagines a battery of weapons, deployed from land, sea and space, able to destroy missiles launched at the U.S.
In December, the Defense Department started selecting companies for the project, for which it has allocated as much as $151 billion. So far, the agency has granted awards to more than 2,000 firms. Cerberus owns or is a majority investor in at least four of them: North Wind, Stratolaunch, Red River Technology and NetCentrics Corp.
Citing national security concerns, defense officials have not publicized the amounts of each contract or the products or services the companies are providing. (The Defense Department is required by law to publicly announce only contracts worth more than $9 million.)
Feinberg, who co-founded Cerberus in 1992, listed assets worth at least $2 billion when he was nominated by Trump last year. In his ethics agreement, Feinberg said he would divest his stake in the firm, potentially giving assets to irrevocable trusts benefiting his adult children — a maneuver that is legal under federal conflict-of-interest law but one that ethics experts say undermines its intent.
Feinberg also told ethics officials that he needed to contract with Cerberus for accounting, tax and health care services in the short term but would find other providers by April 2026. However, at Feinberg’s request, Defense Department officials approved an extension earlier this year, allowing the financial relationship to continue without an end date. In an amendment to his ethics agreement, he said he would “pay customary and reasonable fees” for Cerberus’ services but did not say how much those would be.
It’s unclear what role Feinberg has played — or will play — in deciding which firms receive Golden Dome contracts. In response to questions from ProPublica, the Defense Department said Feinberg does not “have direct responsibility for any Golden Dome acquisitions” but did not elaborate. The department would not comment on whether Feinberg or anyone in his office had met with any contractor representatives.
What is not disputed is Feinberg’s oversight of the Golden Dome initiative. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, who heads the project, reports directly to him.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said Feinberg’s ongoing relationship with Cerberus creates at least a perception of a conflict of interest that could undermine confidence in the fairness of the contracting process.
“This is what President Eisenhower worried about in the 1960s” when he railed against the military-industrial complex, Painter said of Eisenhower’s farewell address warning of the risks of a too-close relationship between the military and private defense businesses.
In response to questions from ProPublica, a Cerberus spokesperson said in an email: “Mr. Feinberg divested his stake in Cerberus and any funds that it manages, and is not involved with the operations of Cerberus or any of its portfolio companies in any way.” The spokesperson added that the administrative services provided to Feinberg “are unrelated to any investment activities or operations of Cerberus or its funds and were pre-approved by the Department of War’s Ethics Office and the Office of Government Ethics.”
Another top official in the department is Marc Berkowitz, who was confirmed in December as assistant secretary of defense for space policy. During his confirmation, Berkowitz described the Golden Dome project as one of his top priorities.
Berkowitz previously worked as a space industry consultant and vice president for strategic planning at Lockheed Martin. The giant defense and aerospace company was among the firms awarded Golden Dome contracts days before Berkowitz’s confirmation.
Lockheed is likely to compete for a large role in the project. The company has set up a webpage dedicated to the Golden Dome, and Reuters reported that Lockheed is one of several firms that received contracts to build competing prototypes of the missile defense system.
In his financial disclosure documents, Berkowitz reported receiving two monthly pensions from Lockheed and owning between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in the firm.
Berkowitz agreed to divest by March 18, documents show. During his confirmation hearing, he downplayed any potential role he would have in Golden Dome contract decisions, noting that his position was more about policy.
A senior Defense Department official told ProPublica that Berkowitz is recusing himself from matters involving Lockheed until his remaining shares are sold.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department’s ethics framework is “rigorous” and that Feinberg and Berkowitz are in full compliance with the law.
“Any claims to the contrary are fake news,” Parnell said.