Lobbying firms with ties to the Trump administration have been raking in business since the election—especially the firms founded by Trump’s campaign bundlers. Several of the Trump-tied firms previously employed administration officials, like White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi, giving them personal connections to a government that in its previous term was marked by dysfunction.
Ballard Partners, the Florida-based firm founded by a top Trump campaign bundler, Brian Ballard, has registered to lobby for 101 new clients since Election Day, recently signing up one of the top corporate lobbying spenders.
Ballard has yet to report how much money its new clients are paying it, but based on the median amount its lobbying clients paid last year, the firm is likely to earn an estimated $6 million this year just from the clients it has signed since the election.
The Business Roundtable (BRT), a trade group for CEOs of major U.S. corporations, hired Ballard Partners to lobby effective Feb. 1 on the issues of “corporate & international taxation” and “international trade and supply chains,” according to a new disclosure. This year, the Republican-controlled Congress will move to extend and make permanent provisions in the Trump-signed tax laws of 2017—with billions of dollars annually in tax breaks at stake for the corporate giants behind the BRT’s members. The BRT is now pushing policymakers to preserve the 21% corporate tax rate, ensure that taxes on foreign earnings aren't nudged upward, and make permanent a tax break for research & development spending that expired in 2022.
In last year’s Trump comeback, Brian Ballard was one of the campaign’s top fundraisers, bundling more than $50 million and arranging meetings with the former president, campaign sources told multiple news outlets. Ballard has known Trump for decades and worked as a Florida lobbyist for the Trump organization, as related in a 2018 profile dubbing him “The Most Powerful Lobbyist in Trump’s Washington.” After the 2016 election, Ballard was a member of Trump’s transition and vice chair of the inaugural committee, and quickly harnessed his connections to bring in 100 federal lobbying clients by the start of 2019.
This year, Ballard is back at the center of power, throwing parties near the White House ahead of the inauguration. Wiles worked for the firm in Florida as managing partner from 2011 into 2022; Bondi lobbied with the firm from 2019 until her confirmation, for clients including Amazon and GEO Group.
