Lobbying firms allied with President Trump saw a bonanza in revenue last year, as many of their highest-paying clients signed up after Trump’s 2024 win to influence the new administration. Six firms led by Trump fundraisers or former staffers—Ballard Partners, Miller Strategies, Continental Strategies, CGCN Group, Checkmate Government Relations, and law firm Michael, Best & Friedrich—raked in $145 million from new lobbying clients in 2025, according to a Sludge analysis of lobbying data.
The tumult of the Trump administration led to record-breaking lobbying spending overall in D.C., and made the deeply Trump-tied Ballard Partners the highest-earning shop in town. Led by top Trump campaign fundraiser Brian Ballard, the public affairs firm set a new record with over $88.1 million in lobbying revenue. It was a nearly fourfold increase for the influence shop, former employer of Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, over the year before. Ballard Partners signed more than 200 new federal lobbying clients in 2025, who together paid the firm roughly $55.6 million, according to Sludge’s review of data compiled by OpenSecrets.
Most of Ballard Partners’ highest-spending lobbying clients were foreign companies or had significant foreign interests seeking to draw on the firm’s access to the Trump administration, as Sludge examined recently. Another high-spending client that hired the firm last year was global law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which cut a deal with the Trump administration to duck punishment, issued in executive orders, over work for the president’s perceived enemies. They paid Ballard Partners $820,000 for lobbying on “employment practices.”
Palantir, the MAGA-aligned software and analytics company, hired Ballard Partners in January 2025 to lobby on “Government software modernization issues.” Palantir’s government revenue under Trump has soared by hundreds of millions of dollars through projects with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and others. The company’s CEO Alex Karp donated $1 million to both Trump’s inauguration and super PAC MAGA Inc. after the election. In August, Palantir was awarded an Army contract worth up to $10 billion over the next decade, bundling dozens of agreements into a more streamlined package.
More new Ballard clients have been bolstered by Trump administration actions. Cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs, which hired the firm a week after the 2024 election, had its token XRP included in Trump’s U.S. Crypto Reserve, a move that analysts predicted would spur institutional investment in crypto. On Jan. 2, the company donated $5 million worth of the token to the Trump Vance inauguration committee. Chevron, which hired the firm weeks after Trump’s win, is a prominent member of lobbying group the American Petroleum Institute (API), which laid out a plan for the incoming administration to boost extraction and exports of fossil energy. The oil industry received mammoth policy wins in the multi-trillion-dollar Republican reconciliation budget that Trump signed into law last summer.
Miller Strategies, founded by another top Trump fundraiser, Jeff Miller, saw its lobbying revenue triple over the previous year. The firm signed over 100 new clients in 2025 that paid it more than $27.3 million for lobbying, Sludge found. Zoom Communications hired Miller Strategies in February 2025 and became a top client, spending $800,000 to lobby the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and others on issues including video conferencing. SoftBank, which hired the firm on Jan. 1 of last year, spent $720,000 lobbying with Miller Strategies on AI, technology, and energy issues. Palantir, which hired the firm a month after Trump’s win, spent $690,000 lobbying on defense policy and appropriations. Other new clients of Miller Strategies include supplement company Botanicals for Better Health & Wellness, utilities group Edison Electric Institute, semiconductor manufacturer Micron, and OpenAI, each of which spent $600,000 lobbying with the firm last year. Last month, Miller hosted a pair of Republican fundraisers in Washington expected to raise $20 million for the GOP efforts to hold Congress.
Nearly all of the top lobbying spenders last year with Continental Strategies, founded in 2022 by Trump adviser and fundraiser Carlos Trujillo, were new clients at the firm, leading to an overall 15x rise in revenue over the year before. The firm similarly inked over 100 new lobbying clients that paid it $21 million last year, according to Sludge’s review. Prison contractor GEO Group tapped the firm shortly after Trump’s win, and spent $600,000 lobbying last year as it is poised to profit from the Trump administration’s billions of dollars in funding for detention. Alphabet’s Google Cloud hired the firm of Trump’s former Ambassador Trujillo and spent $480,000 lobbying on “AI innovation.” Healthcare company Centene signed up after Trump’s win and spent $420,000 lobbying on strategic guidance for Medicare, Medicaid, and the health insurance market. Other high-spending new clients of Continental include workforce lodging company Target Hospitality, Panamanian financial services company Atlantida Global Services, and hospital association Florida Essential Healthcare Partnerships.
