Several lobbyists who helped Donald Trump raise campaign and inaugural funds are now making an unprecedented amount of money on corporate lobbying — profiting off of major corporations’ efforts to gain favor with the Trump administration in its second term, financial disclosures show.
From Blue Origin and Palantir to Nasdaq and the NFL, hundreds of major companies have been flocking to the firms of lobbyists Brian Ballard and Jeff Miller as the two companies bolster their standing as the Trump administration’s power brokers.
Ballard Partners, the firm of Florida-based fundraiser and longtime Trump ally Brian Ballard, made $14.3 million in federal lobbying income just in the first three months of this year, according to lobbying disclosures. At that rate, the company is on track to potentially triple or even quadruple the roughly $19 million it made from federal lobbying in all of 2024.
Ballard Partners, which had already made its name as an ally of Trump during his first Trump presidency, has signed more than 100 new federal lobbying clients since November, according to filings.
During the presidency of Joe Biden, the lobbying business of Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of then-White House Counselor Steven Ricchetti, thrived in a similar manner, picking up major clients like Amazon and TC Energy and more than doubling its lobbying income in 2021 compared to the year before.
But Ballard Partners and Jeff Miller’s firm, Miller Strategies, have expanded even faster, with new Ballard clients including Netflix, American Express and JP Morgan, on top of the NFL and Blue Origin.
The data analytics company Palantir hired both Ballard and Miller’s firms earlier this year as Palantir CEO Alex Karp — once a vocal Trump critic and a Democrat — has been boosting Trump with a hefty political donation and supportive public comments on Elon Musk and his government-slashing efforts. Karp’s company has also reportedly received an increased number of federal contracts under Trump’s presidency.
President Donald Trump speaks briefly to the media after a surprise appearance on the North Lawn, where he said he was inspecting where to put a flag pole, in Washington, April 23, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Also among Ballard’s new clients are blockchain company Ripple Labs, which hired Ballard just days after Trump’s November victory and later gave nearly $5 million in contributions to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee; crypto exchange platform Kraken’s parent company Payward, which also gave $1 million to the inaugural committee; and crypto exchange company Blockchain.com.
Ballard was also hired by TikTok last September as that company sought to maintain its U.S. footprint amid calls to ban the service. Ballard has also lobbied for the Chinese clothing retail company Shein since May of last year.
Separately, Ballard’s firm also represents the Embassy of the Republic of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to foreign lobbying disclosures.
Headed by Jeff Miller, who served as a finance chair on Trump’s second inaugural committee and was previously former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fundraiser, Miller Strategies took in nearly $9 million in just the first three months of this year, which was on track to dwarf the roughly $12 million his firm brought in from federal lobbying during all of 2024.
Miller has signed at least 55 new clients since Trump’s reelection according to filings, including OpenAI and Nasdaq, as well as Softbank Group, the Japanese company that announced a $100 million investment in the U.S. during a press conference with Trump in December.
Other lobbyists that recently raised money for Trump and are now enjoying success include Akin Gump’s Geoff Verhoff, who brought in $3.4 million during 2025’s first three months, and Brownstein Hyatt’s Marc Lampkin, who took in $3 million.
Verhoff’s single biggest client is Nippon Steel, which so far this year has paid Akin Gump nearly $1.7 million amid the ongoing merger negotiations between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel.
Lampkin’s biggest client is Tencent America LLC, an American arm of the Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent, which owns the major Chinese messaging apps WeChat and QQ.