A ProPublica Special Report
For the first time, political appointee and federal financial disclosure information is publicly searchable.
by Derek Kravitz, Al Shaw and Isaac Arnsdorf
When the Trump administration took office early last year, hundreds
of staffers from lobbying firms, conservative think tanks and Trump
campaign groups began pouring into the very agencies they once lobbied
or whose work they once opposed.
Today we’re making available, for the first time, an authoritative searchable database of 2,475 political appointees,
including Trump’s Cabinet, staffers in the White House and senior
officials within the government, along with their federal lobbying and
financial records. Trump Town is the result of a year
spent filing hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests;
collecting and organizing staffing lists; and compiling, sifting through
and publishing thousands of financial disclosure reports.
Here’s what we found: At least 187 Trump political appointees have been
federal lobbyists, and despite President Trump’s campaign pledge to
“drain the swamp,” many are now overseeing the industries they once
lobbied on behalf of. We’ve also discovered ethics waivers that allow
Trump staffers to work on subjects in which they have financial
conflicts of interest. In addition, at least 254 appointees affiliated
with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and at least 125 staffers from
prominent conservative think tanks are now working in the federal
government, many of whom are on teams to repeal Obama-era regulations.
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