Name: Mike Pence

Trump's Pick for: Vice President Corporate Connections: Koch Industries
 

Former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence received hundreds of thousands of dollars from right-wing billionaire David Koch and benefited from ads run by the Koch brothers during his gubernatorial campaign. He also has raked in eye-popping sums from the finance sector, construction industry, pharmaceutical industry and chemical industry. Pence favors austerity when it comes to government spending. As a congressman, he opposed fiscal stimulus, and as governor of Indiana, he paid for corporate tax cuts by reducing local spending.

• Pence has enjoyed support from David Koch, right-wing billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, who has donated $300,000 to Pence’s campaigns.

• Pence benefited from supportive ads from Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity during his gubernatorial run.

• Americans for Prosperity also ran ads during Pence’s governorship to support his policies.

• Pence opposed the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, saying that “it still would have been better if G.M. had gone through an orderly reorganization bankruptcy without taxpayer support.” Pence generally opposes government spending on private sector initiatives, preferring to let the marketplace decide whether companies fail.  

• During his political career, Pence has received more than $1.5 million from the finance sector, more than $1 million from the construction industry, $793,750 from the pharmaceutical industry, and $685,283 from the chemical industry.

Last update: 1/11/17

Last update: 1/11/17

Name: Betsy DeVos

Trump's Pick for: Education Secretary Corporate Connections: Amway, Windquest

Betsy DeVos is the daughter of a wealthy western Michigan industrialist and is married to Amway heir Richard Devos. They have an estimated net worth of more than $5 billion. Members of the DeVos family have been among the foremost funders of right-wing politicians and ideological causes since the 1970s. Aside from extensive contributions to candidates and Republican Party committees, they have concentrated their giving to groups promoting free-market economics. Other contributions have gone to groups opposing campaign finance laws or working on social values issues, such as opposing gay marriage. DeVos’ greatest personal focus has been on education, such as seeking to expand charter schools, permit parents to use public funds as vouchers toward private school tuition and advocating related proposals to steer funding away from traditional public schools.

• Betsy DeVos is chair of the Windquest Group, an investment firm in manufacturing, technology, clean energy and in other investment firms. Windquest has indirectly invested in Social Finance Inc. (SoFI), which profits by helping individuals negotiate the terms of their student loans. SoFi’s prospects could be hindered if proposals to lower the rates on federally issued student loans were approved.
  
• The DeVos family has given an estimated $200 million to conservative causes, Mother Jones estimates. These include gifts to the Heritage Foundation, groups operated by right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, and various groups hostile to campaign finance laws.
  
• The DeVos-funded Mackinac Public Policy Center teamed with Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council in support of “right to work” legislation that was approved in Michigan in 2012.
  
• All Children Matter, an advocacy group that DeVos founded, still owes the state of Ohio $5.3 million stemming from a fine for election law violations it was found to have committed in 2008.
  
• The DeVoses spent $2 million in 2000 on a Michigan referendum that would have permitted students to use public funds on vouchers toward private school tuition. The proposal failed.
  
• A group financed by DeVos successfully opposed legislation “that would have prevented failing schools from expanding or replicating.” The proposed legislation responded to a federal finding that Michigan suffered from “an unreasonably high” percentage of poorly performing charter schools.
  
• Financial disclosures released during Richard DeVos’s failed run for governor of Michigan in 2006 revealed that the couple were investors in K12 Inc., a controversial for-profit company that operates online charter schools. The disclosure did not indicate the size of the DeVoses’ investment.
  
• With respect to the family’s extensive giving to conservative candidates and causes, Betsy DeVos wrote in 1997: "[M]y family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party ... I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now, I simply concede the point. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment; we expect a good and honest government. Furthermore, we expect the Republican party to use the money to promote these policies, and yes, to win elections."
  

Last update: 1/11/17

Elaine Chao is a longtime Washington insider who worked as secretary of the Department of Labor under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. She is the daughter of James Chao, millionaire chairman of the Chinese shipping corporation Foremost Group, notable because the Transportation Department oversees the U.S. Maritime Administration. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is her husband. From 2011 to 2015, Chao received $1.2 million in compensation for serving on the board of directors of Wells Fargo. This period overlaps with the Wells Fargo “cross-selling” scandal, during which the company created more than 2 million unauthorized accounts.

• Chao also serves on the boards of directors for News Corporation, Dole and Protective Life Corporation, a financial service holding corporation.
  
• Chao was a distinguished fellow of the corporate-backed Heritage Foundation from 1996 to 2001.
  
• Prior to 1989, Chao was an executive at BankAmerica Capital Markets Group and Citicorp.
  
• Chao and McConnell’s combined net worth is more than $22 million.
  
• Since 1990, Chao has contributed nearly $200,000 toward supporting Republican political candidates.
  

Last update: 1/11/17

Name: Rick Perry
Trump's Pick for: Energy Secretary
Corporate Connections: Energy Transfer Partners, Waste Control Specialists

While several of Donald Trump’s picks have criticized the agencies they are now being tapped to run, Rick Perry is perhaps unique in calling for the agency he is to head -- the U.S. Department of Energy -- to be eliminated altogether. Pro-energy industry Perry was the governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015, and for two years before that served as lieutenant governor under then-governor George W. Bush. Perry was a Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and 2016. As governor, Perry’s energy policy in Texas was pro-coal, pro-oil, pro-fracking and pro-nuclear waste. He sharply criticized the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which sought to lower carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, and sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of Texas as part of a state effort to block the plan’s implementation. He has been an outspoken denier of the scientific consensus surrounding human-caused climate change. Until January 2017, he sat on the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.

• Perry is or recently was a member of the board for Sunoco Logistics Partners, an energy company planning to purchase Energy Transfer Partners.
• The CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, Kelcy Warren, was the finance chairman of Perry’s most recent presidential campaign and contributed more than $6 million to PACs backing Perry for president.
• As a candidate for state and federal office, Perry has received $11.7 million in contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
• He promoted and permitted a low-level radioactive waste site in west Texas owned by his second-largest donor, Harold Simmons. Waste Control Specialists is seeking to expand this site to "store" deadly high-level radioactive waste, a goal that Perry championed. The U.S. Department of Energy will write the rules that will determine where this waste can be stored.
• For Earth Day in 2006, Perry endorsed TXU Energy’s plans to build 11 new coal plants, even making the ludicrous claim that air pollution would be reduced if these plants were approved.
• When asked in 2011 during a presidential debate which federal agencies he would eliminate if elected, he forgot the name of the Energy Department: “The third agency of government I would do away with - the education, the uh, the commerce and let’s see. I can’t [remember] the third one. I can’t. Sorry Oops.”
• Perry was criticized during a 2011 presidential debate for accepting campaign contributions from Merck after he had signed an executive order mandating HPV vaccinations, which Merck makes. At the time, he had accepted $28,500 from Merck over his political career.
• Perry is the only potential Cabinet member to appear on Dancing With the Stars. The Houston Chronicle said his cha-cha number went "about as well as his two presidential bids."

Last update: 1/11/17

Name: Linda McMahon
Trump's Pick for: Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator
Corporate Connection:  World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

In 1980, Linda McMahon co-founded the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and she served as its CEO from 1997 to 2009. Under Linda McMahon’s leadership and through her lobbying efforts, the wrestling industry remains largely unregulated, saving her company millions but putting the health and safety of wrestlers at risk. McMahon makes many of her employees “independent contractors,” which allows her company to avoid providing health insurance to its employees, as well as paying Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes.

•          With her husband, has a net worth is estimated at $1.16 billion.
  
•          McMahon spent more than $100 million on two failed U.S. Senate bids in 2010 and 2012.
  
•          During one Senate campaign, McMahon misled the public about her lobbying history, denying that she had spent lobbying dollars in Washington, D.C., when the WWE had spent more than $1 million.
  
•          Under McMahon’s leadership, the WWE successfully lobbied state legislatures to deregulate the wrestling industry. The lobbying, which was largely successful, was focused on having the “WWE removed from under the umbrellas of state athletic commissions,” according to reports, “which allowed it to dodge some of the stiff testing standards and fees that states imposed on bona fide athletic leagues.” The result was lower health and safety standards for wrestlers, at a time when the WWE was “embroiled in drug and steroid scandals.”
  
•          Many WWE wrestlers have died, which families of the deceased have attributed to McMahon’s deregulatory efforts. Said one dead wrestler’s father: “Linda McMahon claims one of her greatest accomplishments while working at WWE was getting their industry deregulated. They now operate with absolutely no oversight. History will show that the early death rate of wrestlers started shortly after the regulation was stopped.”
  
•          Donated $7 million to super PACs supporting Donald Trump.
  
•          McMahon once filed a million dollar bankruptcy.

Scott Pruitt has been Oklahoma’s attorney general since 2010. As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt has allowed the fossil fuel industry to draft letters on the attorney general’s letterhead on multiple occasions and has joined with corporate interests in suing the federal government over regulations, including rules he would be obligated to enforce as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

• Pruitt has received more than $300,000 in contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
  
• Pruitt believes the settled science of climate change is “far from settled.”
  
• In a letter to the EPA, Pruitt attacked the agency for its pollution estimates related to new natural gas wells in Oklahoma. Pruitt failed to mention that the “three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.” If chosen to lead the EPA, Pruitt would be a key federal regulator of Devon Energy, the company he was a “stenographer” for.
  
• According to the New York Times, Pruitt also allowed Devon Energy to draft letters from the attorney general’s office to the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Barack Obama.
  
• Pruitt worked together with corporate “self-interested co-plaintiffs” to sue the federal government on many occasions.
  
• Pruitt joined the fossil fuel industry in suing the EPA over the Clean Power Plan, a plan he would be required to enforce as EPA head, for as long as it remains in effect.
  

Name: Jay Clayton

Trump’s pick for: Chairman of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC)

Corporate Connection: Goldman Sachs, Ally Financial, Alibaba Group

Walter “Jay” Clayton has such deep ties to the financial industry that he may have to recuse himself from many major enforcement actions his agency undertakes. Clayton is a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm. According to The New York Times, Sullivan & Cromwell has been Goldman Sachs’ “go-to law firm for more than a century.” His wife, Gretchen Clayton, is a wealth management adviser at Goldman Sachs -- whose activities fall squarely under the purview of the SEC. He was the lead signatory to the New York Bar Association’s 2011 research paper complaining that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) -- that is, the enforcement of international anti-bribery law -- imposes unreasonable costs on U.S. corporations. The SEC enforces the FCPA. The report was part of a coordinated campaign by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to limit enforcement of laws against overseas corruption. Clayton represented Italian oil firm Eni in an FCPA case alleging Nigerian officials were bribed with suitcases full of cash.

• Because of Clayton’s wife’s Goldman Sachs income, a congressional aide said "Clayton will be the most financially conflicted SEC chairman in history." He will be required to recuse himself from enforcement actions against Goldman Sachs, but not regulatory actions that could impact Goldman Sachs’ profits.
• Regarding Clayton’s Goldman Sachs recusals, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote, “Who needs an SEC chief who has to stay on the sidelines for some of the most important cases the agency considers? It's like having a police commissioner who has to cover his ears every time someone mentions the Crips or the Latin Kings.”
• Clayton advised Goldman Sachs on the $5 billion investment it received from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway during the financial crisis.
  
• Before the financial crisis, Clayton advised Bear Stearns during its sale to JPMorgan Chase.
• During the crisis, he advised Barclays Capital in buying up assets left by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The transaction has been criticized as “the greatest bank robbery you never heard of."
• He represented Ally Financial in connection with the $25 billion settlement related to robo-signing and other foreclosure abuses with the federal government and state attorneys general.
• He advised the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group on its $25 billion initial public offering, the largest ever IPO.

Last update: 1/11/17