Lobbying firms tied to Trump report wave of new clients
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 POLITICO 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 POLITICO’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.