MARCH 6, 2025

Trump administration profile: Susie Wiles

By Indy Scholtens

President Donald Trump selected Susie Wiles to be his chief of staff on Nov. 7, 2024, just two days after being elected the nation’s 47th president. The decision did not come as a surprise, as Wiles had been a longtime advisor and managed the campaign that returned Trump to the Oval Office. Wiles is the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff – one of the most influential jobs in Washington.

Who is she?

Wiles, 67, has led an extensive career in politics and lobbying. She has worked on several local, state and national Republican campaigns, including Bush-Quayle in 1988, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ successful 2018 race and Trump’s 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns. Wiles also worked in government, including stints as an aide to Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), a scheduler for President Ronald Reagan and in Reagan’s Labor Department.

Wiles worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners from 2011 to 2022 and Mercury Public Affairs from 2022 to 2024, representing clients ranging from the tobacco industry to mining projects.

During Trump’s 2016 campaign, Wiles advanced from Florida campaign director to senior advisor. She then served as a senior advisor to DeSantis and was credited for saving his campaign. Wiles fell out of favor with DeSantis and he pushed Trump’s 2020 campaign to remove her from her advisory role, according to Politico.

In 2021, Wiles made her return when she was named CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC, a leadership political action committee that served as Trump’s primary fundraising and political spending tool. She went on to serve as Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign manager.

Follow the money

While Wiles was CEO of Save America PAC, donations increased from $31.5 million in 2019–2020, to $108.7 million in 2021-2022.
Wiles has been a longtime contributor to the Republican Party. Her largest donation of $3,094 went to Trump in 2024. She also donated $2,700 to Matt Gaetz in 2019. She made both donations as an employee of Right Coast Strategies, a lobby firm she founded with Tony Boselli, according to Wiles’ LinkedIn page.
While at Ballad Partners and Mercury Public Affairs, Wiles lobbied for foreign entities such as the People’s Democratic Party of Nigeria and the Venezuelan media company Globovision Tele Ca, Corp for which her firm received $450,000. She earned Ballard Partners and Mercury Public Affairs a combined total of $5.6 million through lobbying, according to government records.

Why does it matter?

The chief of staff is considered one of most influential positions within the administration, because of her proximity to the president and control of the White House executive office. Wiles’ extensive and recent career as lobbyist runs counter to Trump’s pledge eight years ago to “drain the swamp.”
The New York Times reported just after the election that companies were scrambling “to sign lobbyists who could help navigate the incoming administration.” Wiles’ former lobbying firm, Ballad Partners (where Attorney General Pam Bondi was also registered as a lobbyist), brought in 33 new clients after the presidential elections. CEO Brian Ballard donated more than $250,000 of his own money to Trump’s joint fundraising committee and raised over $50 million for Trump-related committees.
Both Wiles’ daughters have followed her path in the lobbying industry: Katie Wiles got promoted to lead the Jacksonville and Washington, D.C., offices of the firm Continental Strategy just a day after her mother was named chief of staff. One of its most prominent clients is a tobacco company Susie Wiles lobbied for: Swisher International, a subsidiary of its parent company Hay Island Holding, which paid Continental Strategy $135,000 in 2024 for lobbying. Between the third and fourth quarter of 2024, Continental Strategy brought in 13 new clients.
Susie Wiles’ other daughter, Caroline Wiles, was promoted in January to vice president of federal affairs for the lobbying firm Rubin, Turnbull & Associates. The company brought in four new clients between the third and fourth quarters of 2024. Caroline was appointed as a White House staffer during the first Trump administration, but resigned a little over a month later when she failed an FBI background check.

Additional profiles

Tulsi Gabbard, director national intelligence
Kash Patel, director of the FBI
Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services
Linda McMahon, secretary of education
Elise Stefanik, ambassador to the United Nations
Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior
Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense
Pam Bondi, attorney general

More News & Analysis

2024 was a record year for lobbying

Overall lobbying spending: Business associations, corporations, labor unions and other organizations are spending more than ever to influence policy decisions at the federal level. In 2024, lobbying spending reached a record-breaking $4.4 billion, a $150 million increase that continues an upward trend that began in 2016.

Spending on outside firms: Lobbying firms earned a record $2.2 billion in 2024, continuing to demonstrate year-over-year growth. Earnings for lobbying firms have increased by almost $1 billion over the past decade, totaling almost $19 billion since 2014.

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What else we're reading

Donald Trump Still Hasn’t Disclosed His Secret Transition Funders (NOTUS)

Liberal dark money groups notch victory as Republican retreat from town halls (The Washington Examiner)

The case of the missing $3M: Eric Adams’ campaign finance woes grow (The Washington Examiner)

Out-of-state donations are ramping up in Wisconsin Supreme Court race (Wisconsin Public Radio)

OpenSecrets in the News

See our media citations from outlets around the nation this week:

Elon Musk-backed political group is posting fake pro-Susan Crawford ads on Facebook (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Specifically, Building America's Future filed paperwork in Virginia on Sept. 23 to begin using the fictitious name Progress 2028. Three days later, the group's website was launched, according to Open Secrets. That website, which had recently been updated to focus on Crawford, shut down this week.

Does Jeff Bezos Really Support Free Markets? (Townhall)

His personal political contributions, which can be reviewed on OpenSecrets, are largely to Democrats. Checking out Amazon, in the 2023-2024 cycle, Amazon made $6,941,498 in political contributions. Of these, $5,154,937 went to Democrats and $1,062,201 to Republicans; $674,511 to liberal groups, $63,239 to conservatives.

The five cryptocurrencies Trump wants the US to hold in reserve (Daily Mail)

Ripple is a major player when it comes to crypto lobbying. It donated $45 million to a lobbying group that tried to influence the U.S. elections in favour of the crypto industry, according to OpenSecrets.

Georgia lawmakers push to ban automated speed cameras near schools (The Associated Press)

One issue with abolishing cameras is that companies have become big political donors. Two big vendors, United Kingdom-based RedSpeed and Tennessee-based Blue Line Solutions, contributed around $500,000 to Georgia campaigns in recent years, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan watchdog that tracks money in politics.

Breaking down list alleging companies like McDonald's and Walmart donated to Trump (Snopes)

All campaign contributions, including those to PACs, are required by law to be reported to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), and that information is publicly available. In order to make the numbers for corporate spending even easier to access, the nonprofit organization OpenSecrets collects and republishes data from the FEC, allowing anyone to view political donations and lobbying efforts made by individual companies.