A growing number of Donald Trump’s allies are rushing straight to K Street to cash in, despite the president-elect’s pledge to restrain the industry, and their prized connections could draw huge paydays.

Legitimate ties to Trump and his inner circle are exceedingly rare — and coveted — in a lobbying industry where many established GOP players kept their distance from Trump, or defiantly opposed him, during the bitter primary. Bona fide Trump insiders can expect offers of at least $450,000 a year downtown, according to a person familiar with efforts to recruit them as lobbyists.


The latest Trump insider to head for K Street is Stuart Jolly, who was among the first employees of Trump’s campaign, for which he worked as national field director until mid-April.

Jolly has accepted a position as president of a boutique lobbying and government affairs firm called SPG, according to a message the firm sent to its clients last month, which was obtained by POLITICO.

Jolly joins former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former political director Jim Murphy as former high-ranking Trump campaign officials who recently passed up jobs in the administration and instead took their Trump ties to the influence industry.

It’s more evidence that Trump’s campaign pledge to “Drain the Swamp” is running into the realities of Washington. The president-elect got heat for packing his early transition team with lobbyists, and his Cabinet picks feature a number of high-dollar donors, including WWE co-founder Linda McMahon, Michigan billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos, and former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge fund manager Steve Mnuchin.

And while Trump plans restrictions that look aggressive on paper – such as requiring incoming officials to agree not to lobby again for five years after leaving the administration — the ban is having the unintended effect of convincing some insiders to pass up administration jobs altogether, and instead try to immediately leverage their access as lobbyists.

One of the most stark examples came when Lewandowski last month opened a lobbying firm with another former Trump adviser, Barry Bennett. Murphy became a senior adviser on the federal policy team at the law and lobbying powerhouse BakerHostetler.

Then there are a handful of established Republican lobbyists whose stock on K Street has risen as a result of their work on or support for Trump’s campaign. David Urban, who ran Trump’s Pennsylvania operation, and David Tamasi, who was a top fundraiser for Trump, are expected to command higher rates from clients eager for advice on how to navigate Trumpworld and connections to its key players.

“There is a YUGE talent war going on for people who are connected to this administration and there are a lot of firms moving as quickly as they can to bring people on,” said Ivan Adler, a headhunter with the McCormick Group. “For a president who campaigned vociferously against the swamp, the guys who helped him get elected now are becoming the bigger alligators. That’s what happens.”

While Jolly quit Trump’s campaign in April amid a staff shakeup and joined a pro-Trump super PAC, before that he directed the Trump campaign’s ground strategy and assembled its field staff in early voting states. That means he was responsible for hiring many operatives who are now being brought into key jobs in Trump’s administration.

Such connections could be a major asset to SPG, which is bringing on Jolly, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, to focus on the firm’s “growing global private diplomacy portfolio,” according to the client message.

SPG, which stands for Sonoran Policy Group, describes itself as a “public diplomacy firm,” and has mostly maintained a low profile in Washington, representing an eclectic array of clients including an arms dealer that the Justice Department charged with illegally selling weapons into Libya. (Prosecutors dropped the case, which threatened to embarrass the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton.)

SPG hasn’t been registered to lobby Congress since 2012. But last month it filed with the Justice Department to represent the New Zealand embassy and its hiring of Jolly suggests it may be ramping up its Washington operation under Trump. The firm is partnering with Salem Media to host an inauguration week party that has become a hot ticket among incoming Trump officials and is expected to draw high-profile Trump backers like actor Jon Voight.

The firm is led by Robert Stryk, a former GOP congressional staffer who has his own ties to members of Trump’s team. For instance, he brokered a $1.2-million book deal for former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski last year, which was withdrawn partly because Lewandowski declined to show the publisher his non-disclosure agreement.

In his firm’s message to clients, Stryk said Jolly’s “broad experience across the political, policy, and business sectors further enhance our holistic approach to identifying opportunities, managing risk, and solving complex challenges.”

By going straight to K Street, Jolly, Murphy, Lewandowski and Bennett are sidestepping Trump’s proposed five-year ban on administration officials becoming lobbyists and lifetime ban on lobbying for foreign governments.

When those measures were announced, Sean Spicer, whom Trump later picked for White House press secretary, declared, “people going out of government won’t be able to use that service to enrich themselves.”

Trump’s promises about reducing the power of special interests, crystallized in his “Drain the Swamp” slogan, are now being tested by a market yielding big paydays for Trump insiders.

“Companies are looking for people who have an understanding of Trump, and somebody like Corey has unique insight,” said Mike DuHaime, a partner at the lobbying firm Mercury and a former adviser to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “There are not that many who’ve been very close to Trump or his inner circle.”

Yet that doesn’t mean that anyone who hangs out their shingle on K Street boasting of Trump ties is going to suddenly rise to the top of the lobbying industry.

For one thing, savvy lobbying clients tend to be suspicious of boasts of access, and, since Election Day, several lobbyists and consultants with thin ties to Trumpworld have sought to rebrand themselves as Trump insiders.

For another, premium clients tend to be wary of opening themselves to allegations that they’re overtly buying or selling access to the president. Big companies tend to be risk-averse and protective of their brands; they usually hire lobbyists and consultants to avoid or get rid of bad headlines.

“We definitely would err on side of caution — it’s too high-profile,” said an in-house lobbyist at a Fortune 50 company. “Big companies prefer low profile or no profile.”

“I can’t imagine any blue-chip firm wanting to be associated with that,” the corporate lobbyist said, referring in particular to Lewandowski, who generated significant controversy on the Trump campaign and in prior jobs. “There are other ways to get your message across.”

As an employee of one of the top-spending trade associations put it: “I'd bet on the old money rather than Beverly Hillbillies.”

Lewandowski wasted no time demonstrating the perils when POLITICO revealed that he brokered last month’s meeting between Trump and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Lewandowski didn’t answer requests for comment on this article.

Lewandowski and Bennett will probably have better luck with issue-based coalitions, which are a layer removed from sensitive brands and more closely resemble the political campaigns that are their forte, said an in-house lobbyist at a Fortune 100 company.

“He would be very smart for a coalition,” the lobbyist said. “They’ll make a lot of money giving advice.”

The reputational risks of hiring Lewandowski combined with the fact that most lobbying revolves around Congress, not the White House, could be a leg up for the handful of lobbyists who helped the Trump campaign and already had established practices.

“It’s not a huge group of people that have Trump experience and Washington experience,” a transition official said. “That’s the important combination.”

Foremost among them is Urban, a lobbyist at American Continental Group who joined the campaign in April and delivered the key battleground of Pennsylvania, his home state. Trump credited Urban at his “thank you” rally in Hershey last month.

Urban has been seen on Trump’s plane and in Trump Tower, and Trump watched the Army-Navy game from Urban’s box last month. Once an artillery officer in the 101st Airborne and an aide to Sen. Arlen Specter, Urban’s clients include Comcast, Genentech and the International Franchise Association. He declined to comment for this article.

Trump’s administration could even prove profitable for lobbyists who defended candidate Trump on TV but didn’t work directly for the campaign, such as former Georgia congressman Jack Kingston, a lobbyist at Squire Patton Boggs with clients including Endeavor Robotics, Duke Energy and the Los Angeles 2024 Exploratory Committee. (He was spotted in Trump Tower on Thursday.) Another Trump surrogate, American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp, lobbies for Comcast, Verizon, Delta, Walmart and the Motion Picture Association of America with the firm Cove Strategies.

Bob Dole, the only previous Republican presidential nominee who endorsed Trump, is a lobbyist at Alston & Bird. He already scored a victory for his client, Taiwan, when Trump took a congratulatory call from the island’s president, overturning decades of diplomatic protocol.

Trump also remains close with campaign advisers Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who consult but aren’t registered lobbyists.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman who used to lobby in Washington before focusing on political consulting overseas, seems to be flirting with a lobbying comeback. Last month he traveled to South Korea to meet senior politicians and the country’s intelligence chief, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

And several more Trump staffers could end up as lobbyists or consultants if they don’t take White House jobs, including congressional liaisons Scott Mason (a former in-house lobbyist for home improvement retailer Lowe’s) and Rob Wasinger, deputy campaign manager David Bossie and Rick Gates.

Several aides had or are having discussions with lobbying firms, and some are currently considering offers, according to three people familiar with the talks. Some others who ended up with White House jobs had talks about joining Gotham Government Relations & Communications, a New York lobbying firm that worked with Trump’s businesses since 2010 and helped organize his 2016 campaign announcement, according to partner Brad Gerstman. (The Trump campaign paid the firm $12,000 in October 2015.)

The firm will soon open a K Street address and has been in Washington every week to meet potential clients, including trade organizations, foreign governments, and companies in healthcare and camping, Gerstman said. They have also been at Trump Tower and in touch with the president-elect since the election, he added.

Gerstman laughed off clients’ skepticism of newcomers as “really good spin” from their existing firms.

“There’s only a handful of us” who have access to Trump, he said. “The existing lobbying infrastructure is clearly concerned about the new administration and the fact that it’s not going be the same old boys’ network.”