Donald F. McGahn, now President Donald J. Trump’s White House counsel, made $2.4 million as a lawyer with a client list loaded with deep-pocketed conservative groups, from Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch, to the Citizens United Foundation.
Trump’s legislative affairs director, Marc Short, earned $78,000 from Freedom Partners, a Koch-linked group where he once served as president, plus nearly $380,000 for consulting work, listing clients such as the Club for Growth and Susan B. Anthony List, both right-leaning activist groups, as well as the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican-Florida.
And Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, reported earning more than $1 million tied to conservative-oriented work, with at least $500,000 of that from entities linked to the conservative megadonor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, including the Breitbart News Network and Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm partly owned by Mercer that worked for the Trump campaign.
Those disclosures, contained in 92 personal financial statements of Trump administration staff members released starting on Friday night, offer a hint of how an explosion in spending has expanded the lucrative array of private political work in Washington, enriching even the antiestablishment activists and operatives who sided with Trump.
Much of the new business has come through super political action committees (PACs) and political nonprofit groups whose fundraising has soared since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. While such groups were once a modest sideline to campaign and lobbying work, the new campaign spending rules have allowed wealthy donors and their entourages to displace campaign managers and party leaders as the leading political-power center.
More such business has come from private foundations and ideologically oriented media companies linked to donors like the Mercers, who have invested in websites, documentaries and other endeavors to battle traditional news organizations. They have also formed political advisory operations to steer their giving and promote their influence.
The figures reveal the extent to which private political work has bolstered the financial fortunes of Trump aides, who have made millions of dollars from Republican and other conservative causes in recent years, according to an analysis of the disclosure forms by The New York Times after they were transformed into a computerized database by the Center for Public Integrity.
“It has been a bonanza for the consulting class,” said Walter Shapiro, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, where he studies political spending and campaign finance. “And in this era of dark money, people have gotten very, very rich.”
To be sure, Democrats take care of their own as well. When former President Barack Obama took office in 2009, his senior adviser, David Axelrod, reported an income of more than $1 million, listing consulting services for Democratic candidates and other political clients. Others, like Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, reported income from working on the Obama campaign.
For the Trump aides, one potential drawback is that they will now take government salaries, which for many will amount to a cut in pay as they refrain from outside work to avoid conflicts. When their time in the administration ends, however, they could find even more riches waiting for them.
The arrangement has been especially lucrative for insiders and key operatives with ties to the biggest donors, and those closest to Trump, despite his campaigning on an antiestablishment message and his disparagement of business as usual in Washington.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the aides included in this article. The list of income sources for those in Trump’s White House reads like an encyclopedia of conservative wealth and influence. Many of Trump’s aides have earned money from right-leaning media organizations like Breitbart and Fox News, or from a firm set up by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, to manage his speaking and television appearances.
Several aides received payments from organizations backed by major conservative benefactors, such as the Kochs or the Mercers. Others were paid for work on Republican campaigns, including Trump’s or that of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a onetime rival.
Few Trump advisers are as plugged into the old and new worlds of political money as Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Trump. As a Republican strategist and pollster who ran a consulting firm, Conway earned more than $800,000 from her firm and reported 75 sources of income.
Among the clients that paid her at least $5,000 were the Tea Party Patriots, a group founded in 2009 to oppose Obama’s health-care and spending initiatives, and the Judicial Crisis Network, a nonprofit group that has spent millions of dollars, raised from wealthy donors, in an effort to reshape the federal court system.
She advised nearly a dozen candidates on their campaigns, including Trump and Mike Pence, now the vice president. Conway also earned money from speaking appearances at conservative think tanks like the Alabama Policy Institute and the John Locke Foundation.
Like many of her colleagues, Conway also profited from at least two Mercer endeavors: A super PAC called Keep the Promise, as well as Cambridge Analytica, which claims to provide “psychographic” profiles that can predict the political leanings of each American adult.
Image credits: Doug Mills/The New York Times