A senior staffer working for Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) has been cashing in as a lobbyist for multiple major corporations constantly under scrutiny by Congress, according to a new report.
Newly surfaced South Dakota state filings, reviewed by Politico, show Rounds' longtime aide Robert Skjonsberg has spent "more than a decade" at the senator's side while quietly lobbying the state legislature for over a dozen outside clients.
His own government-affairs shop, 605 Strategies — whose website names him "co-owner" and "founding member" — doesn't even appear in his lobbying paperwork, according to the report.
Among the clients on his roster: Meta (formerly Facebook), tobacco giant Altria, the conservative Freedom Foundation, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) and the South Dakota Dairy Producers and Pork Producers.
"Rounds has introduced several bills related to AI since Skjonsberg registered to represent Meta last year, including one that would establish a commission to study the impacts of AI on the workforce," Politico reported. "Rounds, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, has also worked on legislation that could impact the ag trade groups that Skjonsberg lobbies for in South Dakota. He introduced legislation this year to create new grazing land for the cattle industry and restrict individuals and entities controlled by foreign adversaries from purchasing agricultural land and businesses in the U.S., for example."
Skjonsberg ran Rounds' first Senate campaign in 2014, then spent 2015 to 2022 as his chief of staff before shifting into a "senior advisor" role; his state lobbying registration dates to 2023.
"It's wholly inappropriate for somebody who's working as a Senate staffer to be lobbying, even if it's only at the state level, because you can't draw this line or wall between all the kinds of information you gain," Meredith McGehee, an independent congressional ethics expert who previously led the watchdog group Issue One told Politico. "To me, this is pretty much a no-go, and it's an outside employment that should not be permitted."
AEM and Meta both say Skjonsberg's contract ended in March, when the legislative session wrapped. Altria and the two farm groups didn't respond to Politico; the Freedom Foundation declined to comment.
"It poses the most obvious conflict of interest I can imagine," Craig Holman of Public Citizen told Politico. "Serving a public official, you're supposed to be working on the public's behalf, but then simultaneously working as a hired lobbyist, you're now working also on some private special interest's behalf and getting directly paid for it."
