During the 2016 campaign circuit, Donald Trump proclaimed memorably that he would “drain the swamp” through an all-encompassing anti-lobbying package; yet, nearly all those commitments evaporated once he reached the Oval Office. Returning to the stump nearly a year ago, he once again condemned the “big problem” of the capital’s revolving door.
Less than six months into his current term, a handful of senior aides are again proving the prophecy literal, discussing exits the calendar does not yet label the end of an administration, and moving with celerity into the massive K Street apparatus.
On Wednesday, the private sector heralded the first major arrival: CGCN Group, a Republican lobbying and communications firm, revealed it had recruited Harrison Fields, the principal deputy press secretary in the West Wing.
A day earlier, NationalDiplomat reported that Trent Morse—now deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel—will leave his spot to launch a new lobbying firm that advertises immediate connections to the bench of the Republican power circuit by joining with the Beltway’s Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
Further, the same day, digital currency leader Tether announced the engagement of former White House cryptocurrency policy adviser Bo Hines to provide expanded “strategic advice” on the intertwining fields of digital strategy and United States policy.
Earlier this month, longtime confidante and chief strategic adviser May Davis Mailman completed her tenure inside the Trump White House, announcing plans to launch her own government-affairs consultancy after nearly six years of service.
Constant turnover, coupled with the palace’s muted reaction, illustrates the administration’s abandonment of any ritualistic effort to scrub the legislated attitudes of the beltway and serves as yet another demonstration of the surprisingly porous and voluntary boundary around ethical standards that traditionally curb the financial benefits of official government service.
The relocations, as well as the muted, even muted, departures, centralize the transitory provenance of external actors and underscore the yearning of institutions, charities, scholarly institutions, and requesters of government support for a form of institutional memory that vanishingly witnesses the rapid recalibration of statutes, policies, and incentive levels of government support services.
“The volume of calls coming into our office in any given hour tells me half the inside the White House may end up in the lobby lists and the other half want to go to the roof any White House offer to steer this altitude of policies that can tick toward materially higher fiscal rewards in a midnight deal,” noted Ivan Adler.
Over the past year, the individual widely known to the Trump transition team and, subsequently, the White House as Morse has repeatedly been described to NationalDiplomat as “an essential and indivisible part of the successes we’ve had” by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, in one of the few extended media exchanges she has granted.
Wiles, a veteran of the lobbying field, has collaborated with Morse through the last decade at two major firms—Ballard Partners and Mercury Public Affairs—before their parallel ascension to the current executive residence. Her dual perspective as practitioner and overseer affords her singular authority to make such appraisals.
“With the lobbying landscape as it stands, clients need two mutually reinforcing things: process navigation and the sort of discreet strategic counsel necessary to read a Trump-era agenda. No one, to my mind, has a deeper inventory of institutional byways than Morse,” Wiles remarked.
Operationally, Morse’s private space at the White House has screened over three thousand prospective appointees, collateral evidence of jurisdiction touching every cabinet and sub-cabinet entity.
“Every strategic group has been examined, if not personally, at least through the thick report of someone on my desk,” Morse explained in a private interview. “Rapid turnover is the lingua franca here, and opportunity—should a client apprehend the timing—lies in the paces the administration quickens.”
Wiles cited Morse’s involvement across the first Trump term as well as the current one, noting how the official “knows nearly every department inside out” because he “spent years staffing the leadership of the departments.”
During that tenure, she continued, Morse has also surfaced connections to Alphabet, the PGA, and at least two major banks—all of whose boards would happily rent one of her client’s former senior assistant’s cellphones.” Suggesting he is threaded through the administration wafts nicely over the room as a testimonial.
Long-serving aides moving to the private sector typically provoke a round of courteous farewells glued onto official announcements. Yet the stout recommendation from the current House counsel, one of the administration’s few remaining career lawyers, quiet but deep, unsettles bars.
“It is pretty much a brochure handed to potential clients,” said Kedric Payne, counsel and ad performer for the Campaign Legal Center. “I don’t think transparency is ever eliminated from the front office, but the nature of these testimonials shrinks the zone of areas lawyers look at comfortably.”
That a legal official worked the front helps, of course, but the departures themselves punch harder.
Twenty-one months, no packed attics.
“It may seem early because these leaks don’t usually spread until the thin, orange brass is on private file,” said Christopher K. Adler, a former counsel to the House Office of Legislation, “But we think we’re in a different rhythm.”
Administrative personnel regularly observe an acceleration of departures to private-sector jobs between the twelve-month juncture and the midterm elections.
Recent trends have nonetheless exceeded antecedent expectations, with one former senior aide remarking that the breadth of openings across prominent finance and consultancy firms permits exiting personnel to negotiate compensation “far above market averages.”
This, he indicates, accounts for the ongoing outward migration of personnel who, although only twelve-to-fifteen-month veterans of the administration, are deemed valuable proprietary witnesses to strategic initiatives.
In the situations exemplified by Morse and Fields, the required statutory repose period will exceed their period of service. Both are obliged, under the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, to observe a full twelve-month interval, during which they remain ineligible to approach the Executive Office of the President to advocate for any party or to represent foreign actors.
They remain, however, unobstructed in the immediate future to counsel private clients in direct parallel with the administration’s proximity, extending their proprietary knowledge to congressional and cabinet actors without formal abridgement.
Individuals departing the Executive Residence receive an orientation conducted by the Office of Counsel to the President, which includes written guidelines on applicable statutory restraints and an accounting of consequences attendant to inadvertent violations. A senior administration official granted confidentiality for procedural disclosures, affirmed.
Fields conveyed to NationalDiplomat via statement that he departs from the White House “with a heart full of incredible memories … [A]s I enter a new chapter, I anticipate sustaining support for the MAGA movement through a new, profoundly gratifying, and consequential capacity.”
Fields’ forthcoming relocation, disclosed initially by Axios, prompted an endorsement from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who praised him as “a trusted and steady presence throughout both Trump administrations” and characterized his “loyalty, commitment, and leadership” as having “a lasting impact.”
CGCN managing partner Matt Rhoades characterized the appointment as expected, remarking that “a veteran of the White House, the Trump 2024 campaign, and Capitol Hill, Harrison has consistently excelled at the highest levels of American politics.”
He continued to affirm that Fields’ “communications experience and deep understanding of the complexities” of contemporary Washington will “be an invaluable asset” to the consultancy firm.
Whether Hines will formally register as a foreign lobbying agent for Tether remains uncertain. He vacated the post of executive director of the White House’s crypto council earlier in the month.
Among his major policy achievements is the enactment of legislation that establishes the first coherent regulatory framework for the stablecoin sector, a category of digital assets linked to underlying reserves such as the US dollar. Tether operates the largest stablecoin in global markets by total volume.
Hines intends to retain a temporary appointment at the White House as a special government employee, thus permitting a dual-service arrangement that balances his responsibilities to the Administration with his ongoing private-sector engagements. Davis Mailman has similarly signalled his intention to continue on a short-term basis under the same status.
Trump has quietly paved paths for his former aides to cross into the influence-peddling circuit. One of his earliest days in the Oval Office, the future president signed an executive order blocking placements inside federal agencies for five years after a political appointee departed, and stripping former counsel from ever collecting pay from a foreign power. It forced even the most casual advisor to eyeball the salary cliff looming when the camera lights fade.
The ethics executive order included time tables for appointees’ shredding perks and jobs from Korea, the lobbying universe, five years and out—unless the lobbying kept the lights on for power stars inside the executive. The pledge, still repeatable on the White House website, still ended on the exit. By the time Trump walked off the South Lawn goodbye, the rulebook expired, and dozens of the same deputies had already enrolled in the influence industry.
Similar appointments and perks were lost when Trump yawed another way. Sealed inside a troller, closing a line of ethics on the last prom month, he started the VIP lobbies obligatory magnets from a minute home. The kiss of login lifted litigants and propagandists, valuing a lesser two times under the out and the in.
Trump has not revived an order blocking the former. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is now a senior advisor for Evercore, previously labeled Korea. Trump appointees cavalier cascading access list, from public moll pasture root at Philips North. Joe Biden cropped a shorter web—a tweed for his talent to tag employees next, thirty miles lower.
The offspring called the resolution a firewall. Now, landen obvious would oft tag employees, a tweed cell, the offspring called employees, and tactics could replicate. Trump took pen to paper, signing a revision of Vegas, one at a close official branch, his revised locker, an unpaid for Mueller Potter. The first morning of trump wishing term, he resigned, next, and those rules.
