Revolving-Door Riches: How Obama-Biden
Officials Cashed In During The Trump Years
How lucrative is the swamp? A first-of-its-kind
analysis shows 77 officials who served under
Obama and Biden boosted their assets by an
estimated 270% from 2017 to 2021.
By Eric Fan
Most people have heard of Washington’s
revolving door, which allows politicos to cash
in on their government service by roving between
the private and public sectors, leveraging their
government connections and know-how. Distaste
for the revolving door, and the potential
conflicts of interest it creates, is one of the
few things that can unify Republicans and
Democrats. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden
both enacted rules to try to limit those
interested in passing through the revolving
door.
Yet
officials on both sides of the aisle have also
taken advantage of the revolving door. A
first-of-its-kind analysis, conducted by
Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media
Innovation, MuckRock and Forbes,
identified 151 officials who left the government
in the final days of the Obama administration,
then returned under Biden. We were able to track
down
before-and-after sets of financial disclosures
for 77 of those officials,
allowing us to see how their personal finances
changed when they passed through the revolving
door.OFFICIAL
OUTPERFORMANCE
The stock market soared 70% from
2017 to 2021, helping boost household assets
across the country by 38%. Life was especially
good for those passing through the revolving
door, however. They juiced their holdings by an
estimated 270%.
The data is clear. The officials’ median assets
increased an estimated 270% over four years. By
comparison, total household assets increased 38%
nationwide from 2017 to 2021, according to
data published by the Federal Reserve.
The S&P 500 went up 70% over the same period.
The figures highlight why it’s so tempting for
public officials to leverage their government
experience for private gain. “This shows what
the revolving door is all about,” says Craig
Holman of Public Citizen, a left-leaning think
tank that advocates for corporate accountability
and lobbying reform. “People swing through the
revolving door to enhance their personal
wealth.”
Walter
Shaub, who served as director of the U.S. Office
of Government Ethics during the Obama and Trump
administrations and now works at a watchdog
organization called the Project on Government
Oversight, came to the same conclusion: “In any
one official’s case, there might be an
explanation. But it’s hard to believe there is
an explanation for all [77] of them.”
Boiled down, the revolvers followed three
basic formulas. The first: Joining a big company
and earning a big salary. Consider Sameer
Punyani, who started his career as a 23-year-old
staffer on Obama’s 2008 campaign before joining
the Department of Defense and, in 2017, jumping
to defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
Punyani eventually earned $293,000 as a lead
associate at the company. His wife, Bhavna
Changrani, also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton
as a lawyer. In 2017, they reported less than
$15,000 in retirement savings. But by 2021, they
had built up an investment portfolio of $293,000
to $970,000, according to their financial
disclosure reports, which list assets in broad
ranges. Property records show that the couple
also upgraded their $465,000 Washington
apartment to a $900,000 townhouse in 2020. Asked
about their finances, Punyani declined to
comment.
It’s not just mid-level employees who benefit
from the revolving door. Between his tenure as a
four-star general and the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, Lloyd Austin joined the boards of
Raytheon Technologies, Nucor Corp. and Tenet
Healthcare, earning more than $1 million in cash
and $2 million in equity grants. In 2018, he and
his wife purchased a $2.6 million home outside
the nation’s capital, now part of their roughly
$7 million fortune. Representatives for the
Department of Defense did not respond to
requests for comment.
Those who don't work directly for a big
company can join a law or lobbying firm. Beth
George, a lawyer in the defense and justice
departments under Obama, advised senior
officials on national security and policy
issues. Then she headed to Silicon Valley, where
she joined Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In
2020, she earned $1.8 million, working with
companies like Google, Twitter and Snap. George
briefly served as the acting general counsel for
the Department of Defense in 2021, before
returning to the more lucrative world of private
practice. George did not respond to a request
for comment.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro
Mayorkas left the Obama administration in 2016
to join WilmerHale, a powerful firm in D.C. Over
the next four years, he worked with clients like
MGM Resorts, Blackstone and Northrup Grumman.
When Mayorkas rejoined the government last year,
he disclosed a $3.3 million partnership share,
plus a payment of $1 million or more still due
to him. No one in our analysis reported
receiving quite as much from a law firm as
Mayorkas, who is now worth an estimated $8
million. His representatives in the Department
of Homeland Security did not respond to a
request for comment.
The third route through the revolving door:
starting your own shop. James O'Brien, Biden’s
coordinator for sanctions policy, led the
European practice at international advisory firm
Albright Stonebridge while he was out of
government. The state department underscored
O’Brien’s resume, which includes working on
sanctions programs for the United States and the
United Nations, as well as serving as a special
presidential envoy on two occasions. “Jim
O’Brien’s qualifications speak for themselves,”
a spokesperson said in a statement. O’Brien’s
former firm has sent more than a dozen of its
alumni into the administration, raising concerns
about its influence within the government. The
State Department spokesperson refused to be
identified providing additional information
about O’Brien’s work at Albright Stonebridge.
THE CABINET’S REVOLVING DOOR
When high-ranking officials leave government,
they tend to find opportunities waiting for them
in the private sector. These seven Biden cabinet
members had plenty to keep themselves busy
during the Trump years.
The
same concerns surround WestExec Advisors, a
strategic consulting firm that Secretary of
State Antony Blinken cofounded in 2017. Working
with clients such as FedEx, Blackstone and Uber,
Blinken grew the firm quickly. In 2018, he and
his wife Evan Ryan—also a former Obama and
current Biden employee—bought a $4.3 million
house outside of D.C. Three years later, as
secretary of state, he listed $1.2 million of
guaranteed payments and distributions from
WestExec, as well as over $1.5 million of
investments connected to the firm. He’s now
worth an estimated $10 million. “Secretary
Blinken has made clear that we adhere to the
strictest ethical standards and that our only
consideration will be in the national interest,”
Ned Price, a spokesperson for the State
Department, said in a statement. “Every State
Department official will abide by applicable
disclosure requirements and strict ethics rules,
including recusals when appropriate. That, of
course, includes the secretary.”
Adherence to ethics restraints doesn’t always
preclude making money via the revolving door.
“Government insiders can sell understanding of
the government at a high rate,” says Jeff
Hauser, who scrutinizes the revolving door
through his work at a left-leaning think tank
called the Center for Economic Policy and
Research. “It does not matter if they take on
the name lobbyist, consultant, attorney or
strategic advisor.”
Representatives of the Small Business
Administration, office of the Director of
National Intelligence, White House and State
Department said in statements that their
employees face routine and stringent ethics
requirements while in office. On the day he
became president, Biden issued an executive
order that banned officials from working on some
issues, like regulations and contracts, that are
directly related to their former employers and
clients. “President Biden has established the
highest ethical standards of any administration
in history,” the White House said in a
statement.
The
ban, however, only applies to cases where a
personal service has been provided to the
company in question, which also has to be a
named party in the policy discussion. In
reality, much of what a corporation wants from
the government is more abstract—for example,
broad tax relief or general trade policy.
Biden’s ethics advisors don’t “think like people
who are trying to follow the spirit of the
rules,” says Shaub, the former ethics director,
who has been in touch with White House officials
over the past year. “They think like lawyers who
are trying to literally follow rules.”
METHODOLOGY
In
partnership with Forbes, Columbia
University’s Brown Institute for Media
Innovation and MuckRock identified 151
“revolving door” government officials who left
the Obama administration after 2016, worked in
the private sector and returned under the Biden
administration in 2021. The disclosures were
parsed using an open-source tool developed by
the Center for Public Integrity and then cleaned
the data using the programming language R.
In
public financial disclosures,
each asset’s valuation is disclosed as a range,
such as “$1,001 to $15,000” or “$15,001 to
$50,000.” The true valuation of the asset is
somewhere within the range. Sometimes there is
no upper limit, such as when certain assets are
listed as “over $1 million.” Therefore, most
computational findings in this story are based
on lower minimum amounts. To arrive at the 270%
estimate, for example, the percentage increase
of each individual’s reported minimum asset
amount was calculated from 2017 to 2021.
An
increase in reported minimum asset value does
not necessarily indicate that someone became
wealthier. But compared to the largest possible
amounts, the minimum amounts are more consistent
indicators of wealth. The differences between
reported minimum assets are not meant to
precisely estimate changes in any individual’s
net assets. Instead, they point to an aggregate
pattern—that most officials became significantly
wealthier after going through the revolving
door.
The views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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