SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
lobbying
Trump Chief of Staff Wiles Subpoenaed in Foreign Lobbying Criminal Case
“This kind of entanglement shows exactly why a person with Wiles’ lengthy record of controversial corporate and foreign lobbying clients is too conflicted to be running the White House," said one advocate.
Feb 06, 2026
A court filing in a federal criminal lobbying case against a former Republican congressman confirmed what the government watchdog Public Citizen warned against as soon as President Donald Trump appointed Susie Wiles to be his chief of staff: that her "lobbying client list is both extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House."
The court filing was submitted Thursday by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and sought to "quash" a subpoena that was served to Wiles in December.
Wiles was called to testify as a witness in the case against former Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) and his political associate, Esther Nuhfer. They are accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by lobbying on behalf of the sanctioned Venezuelan businessman Raul Gorrín.
According to a grand jury indictment from December 2024, Rivera sought to lobby top US government officials to remove Gorrín from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. He allegedly worked to conceal and promote Gorrín's criminal activities by creating fraudulent shell companies using names associated with a law firm and with a government official.
Rivera received over $5.5 million for his lobbying activities and did not register under FARA as required by law, according to the DOJ.
The Miami Herald reported late last month that Rivera and Nuhfer are "also accused of trying to 'normalize' relations between the [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro regime and the United States while Rivera’s consulting firm landed a head-turning $50 million lobbying contract with the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company."
Attorneys for Rivera subpoenaed Wiles at the White House, seeking to compel her to testify about her lobbying work for Ballard Partners on behalf of Globovision, a Caracas-based TV station owned by Gorrín.
As the Herald reported, Wiles worked at Ballard shortly after running Trump's presidential campaign in Florida. Due to her presidential ties she "brought an instant cachet" to the firm, where Gorrín was "hoping to gain access to the new Trump administration, which was threatening economic sanctions against the Maduro regime and Venezuela’s oil industry."
Gorrín was working with Ballard in an attempt to expand Globovision to the US as a Spanish-language affiliate—an aim that presented challenges due to the government sanctions and the Federal Communications Commission's limits on foreign ownership of US TV stations.
Rivera and Nuhfer's lawyers are seeking Wiles' testimony to show that her lobbying firm was trying to influence Trump, "on behalf of Gorrín, to bring about a regime change in Venezuela."
The subpoena document said the defendants' lawyers want to question Wiles on her "extensive communications" regarding Ballard's work with Gorrín and efforts to help the businessman gain access to Trump.
They are also seeking similar testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who as a senator met privately with Rivera, Nuhfer, and Gorrín at a hotel in Washington in 2017, according to the Herald.
In the court filing, the DOJ said Wiles had "no apparent connection to any of the allegations in the superseding indictment concerning defendants’ activities as unregistered agents of the government of Venezuela."
Public Citizen noted Wiles' work with Ballard in November 2024 when it published the report Meet Susie Wiles’ Controversial Corporate Lobbying Clients, which revealed 42 lobbying clients the chief of staff had between 2017-24.
The client list was "extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House," said Public Citizen on Friday.
In addition to Gorrín's TV station, Wiles' represented a waste management company that resisted removing nuclear waste from a landfill, a tobacco firm that sought to block federal restrictions on its candy-flavored cigars, and a foreign mining private equity firm seeking approval to develop a gold mine on federal public lands.
Jon Golinger, Public Citizen's democracy advocate, said Friday that the subpoena in the Rivera case raises even more questions about Wiles' potential conflicts of interest.
“This kind of entanglement," he said, "shows exactly why a person with Wiles’ lengthy record of controversial corporate and foreign lobbying clients is too conflicted to be running the White House."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Corruption, Pure and Simple': Probe Identifies Rich Donors Benefiting From Trump Presidency
“These people are not getting coerced. They are making business decisions,” said one former official who left the Trump White House to become a lobbyist.
Dec 22, 2025
A detailed investigation published Monday shows that many wealthy and powerful contributors to US President Donald Trump's staggering post-election fundraising haul—now at roughly $2 billion—have seen a return on their money in the form of pardons, corporate-friendly regulatory changes, government contracts, and dropped enforcement cases.
Drawing on campaign finance filings and previously unreported documents, the New York Times found that more than half of the 346 big donors it identified "have benefited, or are involved in an industry that has benefited, from the actions or statements of Mr. Trump, the White House, or federal agencies," including Palantir CEO Alex Karp, ExxonMobil, Amazon, Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi, Dow Chemical, and Goldman Sachs.
“So many of you have been really, really generous,” Trump told ballroom donors at a recent dinner.
The Times investigation focused on corporations and individuals who have donated at least $250,000 through various channels, including Trump's inaugural committee, which raised nearly four times as much as former President Joe Biden's; his White House ballroom project; and pro-Trump political action committees and nonprofits.
"The astounding haul hints at a level of transactionalism for which it is difficult to find obvious comparisons in modern American history," the newspaper reported. "The identities of the donors behind much of the cash are not legally required to be, and have not been, publicly disclosed. In some cases, Mr. Trump’s team has offered donors anonymity."
Corruption, pure and simple. Trump is selling the presidency and our country. www.nytimes.com/interactive/... Hundreds of Big Post-Election Donors Have Benefited From Trump’s Return to Office
[image or embed]
— Zak Williams (@zakwilliamswzw.bsky.social) Dec 22, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Since winning a second White House term, Trump's political apparatus has reportedly raised more money than it did for the 2024 election campaign—an indication that corporations, their executives, and their armies of lobbyists saw in Trump's return to the Oval Office an enticing investment opportunity.
Harrison Fields, a former Trump administration official who left the White House earlier this year to become a lobbyist, told the Times that post-election donors to the president "are not getting coerced."
"They are making business decisions," Fields added.
The Times investigation outlines numerous ways in which Trump donors have benefited directly or indirectly from the administration's actions this year, while working-class Americans suffer the impacts of rising unemployment, tariff chaos, and a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
"While the donations far exceed most Americans’ means, the sums pale in comparison to the contracts being sought from the Trump administration," the outlet noted. "Take Mr. Trump’s 'Golden Dome' missile defense project, which could yield lucrative work for a number of contractors. Palantir has already held discussions about being involved. Firms including Lockheed Martin and Boeing also are expected to compete for pieces of the work; each company donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee."
The technology firm Palantir has, according to the Times, "secured federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including to develop software to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement deport people." The company donated $10 million to the White House ballroom project.
Trump's post-election donors have also received ambassadorships, pardons for white-collar crimes, and industry-friendly policies.
"The crypto industry writ large has benefited from Mr. Trump’s cheerleading, as well as his championing and signing into law a bill creating the first federal rules for stablecoins," the Times reported. "Mr. Trump has also favored the fossil fuel industry, directing tens of billions of dollars in incentives to companies, allowing drilling in the Alaska wilderness, and repealing environmental regulations. About two dozen companies with interests in oil, gas, and coal donated at least $41 million."
While the Times emphasized that it is "not possible to prove that any of the donations directly led to favorable treatment from the Trump administration," the newspaper added that "many of the deep-pocketed individuals and corporations who have given large sums have a lot riding on the administration’s actions, raising questions about conflicts of interest."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Big Tech Ramps Up Propaganda Blitz As AI Data Centers Become Toxic With Voters
One Michigan state legislator said data centers are emblematic of the divide between "tech billionaires who are seizing power and… the working and middle classes."
Dec 18, 2025
As voters across the country begin to rally against the unchecked construction of data centers, artificial intelligence companies are panicking and investing millions into propaganda to paint the energy-sucking facilities in a more positive light.
By 2030, the amount of energy demanded by US data centers is expected to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency.
Energy costs have spiked considerably in the states with the most data centers. And as the industry continues its breakneck expansion, one watchdog report found that consumers on America's largest electric grid are expected to pay hundreds of dollars more to meet increased power demand from now until 2027.
These costs became an unexpected point of emphasis for Democrats in November, whose calls for greater transparency from tech companies seeking to build data centers propelled them to victory in elections from New Jersey to Virginia.
But tech companies want to keep building, and as AI threatens to become a central villain of the 2026 midterm elections, Politico reports that companies are putting the wheels in motion to portray themselves "as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs."
As Gabby Miller wrote on Wednesday:
A new AI trade group is distributing talking points to members of Congress and organizing local data center field trips to better pitch voters on their value. Another trade association, the Data Center Coalition, nearly tripled its lobbying spend in the third quarter of this year from the previous quarter, according to US lobbying disclosures.
The social media giant Meta, with billions invested in its own fleet of data centers from Stanton Springs, Georgia, to Richland Parish, Louisiana, has been running a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting data centers as a boon to agricultural towns in Iowa and New Mexico. It has spent at least $5 million nationally in the past month on TV ads plugging Meta’s $600 billion pledged investment in tech infrastructure and jobs.“
"There’s a very bad connotation around data centers. And this is something that, frankly, the data center industry needs to figure out,” said Caleb Max, president and CEO of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, a new trade group established in January to accelerate AI infrastructure development.
Tech giants are also putting focus on swaying policymakers. Max told Politico that his group has been making the rounds to talk with elected officials in critical battlegrounds for the AI future, like Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, to craft a "positive pro-data center campaign message for elected officials, for businesses, for current lawmakers who are going to be up for reelection in 2026."
Meanwhile, Meta reportedly aired its 30-second TV spots "featuring small-town imagery of farming equipment and mom-and-pop diners" in Washington, DC, and nine state capitals. Miller says this suggests "that policymakers might be Meta’s real target audience, rather than the rural Americans impacted by these energy-hungry server hubs."
AI and tech firms plan to ramp up the lobbying and ad blitzes as the next election draws nearer, and their attempt to reframe the narrative about data centers comes as no surprise, as communities across the US in recent months have increasingly come out in force to push their representatives to halt the construction of the facilities.
In Saline Township, a small community just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, more than 800 residents descended upon a public input session earlier this month to protest against the construction of a $7 billion center—predicted to consume as much energy as the entire city of Detroit—fearing it would raise energy costs, pollute groundwater, and force the state to abandon its nation-leading climate policies.
The town initially blocked the plans, but reversed course following a lawsuit from a real-estate billionaire closely aligned with President Donald Trump, whose administration has backed the $500 billion "Stargate" initiative by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to expand data centers.
On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined Saline residents at a gathering outside the state Capitol, where they called for a statewide moratorium on data centers.
Data center projects have run into similar resistance nationwide. As of March, the group Data Center Watch found that more than $64 billion worth of projects had been blocked or delayed due to local opposition since May 2024. This opposition has reached a fever pitch in recent months.
Last week, after it received hundreds of angry comments from residents, the city council of Chandler, Arizona, unanimously rejected plans for a $2.5 billion data center that had been pushed by former US Sen.-turned lobbyist Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
Even in Trump country, backlash has been fierce. Last week, the planning commission of Starke County, Indiana, voted unanimously to recommend a one-year moratorium on the construction of centers bigger than 5,000 square feet after residents flooded a meeting to raise concerns about water pollution and energy costs.
"In Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk's AI company has built a data center whose energy demands have outgrown the region's energy capabilities," said one resident, Sophia Parker. "We've heard from everyone else saying that our infrastructure does not have the capacity to support a data center. And as a result, gas turbines are emitting nitrogen oxide to the point where residents cannot breathe. Their community is being used as a sacrifice for others to get rich. We cannot allow that to happen to us."
Last month in Montour County, Pennsylvania—a state where electric prices have surged by 15% this year, double the national average—environmentalists formed an uncommon alliance with conservative farmers and the Amish to stop the county planning commission from rezoning 1,300 acres of agricultural land for a massive new center.
“Stay out. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation without federal involvement,” said Craig High, a 39-year-old Trump supporter quoted by Reuters. “Both parties are pushing data centers and giving regulatory relief—water permits, permitting, all of it.”
“This is part of an experience that America and the world is having around tech billionaires who are seizing power and widening the gap between those who have much too much… and the working and middle classes,” Yousef Rabhi, a former Democratic state legislative leader from Michigan and clean energy advocate who opposes the construction of data centers, told The Guardian. “That’s what these data centers are symbolic of, and they’re the vehicle for the furtherance of this divide."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular