While EPA administrator Scott Pruitt overachieves in providing scandal-a-day diversion, there's a stealth member of the Trump team who is quietly consolidating all the influence peddling in his own office: Vice President Mike Pence.
The Washington Post reports that Pence is now the gatekeeper for all the lobbyists who want to influence any and all of the federal agencies. In fact, the number of lobbyists making their case to Pence in his first year in office is double that of any single year for either former VP Joe Biden or Dick Cheney, the Post has found from federal record searches. Businesses seeking favorable tax treatment have gone to Pence. So have pharmaceutical companies (hey, where's that big prescription drug price drop you guys promised?), big oil and other energy companies, and everything else. His office has become the first stop for a variety of lobbyists on "obscure regulatory matters such as a Medicare billing dispute, technology regulations at the Department of Education and regulations at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the records show."
It's all very chummy, says the Post, leading to a "feeling of extended family that courses through Pence’s inner circle, which includes friends, donors and former staffers who are among the lobbyists in regular contact with the vice president's office." In more honest terms, cronyism and nepotism rein when it comes to Pence, and by extension, the administration. One example is Bob Grand, "a veteran Republican lobbyist whose firm billed corporate clients $3.3 million over the first 15 months of the Trump administration for lobbying that involved the vice president’s office." He's such a great chum that he get some of the credit for talking Pence into joining the Trump campaign, and is a fixture in team Pence, hanging out with him on trips on Pence's government plane, hosting high-dollar fundraisers for his congressional-candidate brother Greg Pence. And getting $3.3 million worth of access to the federal government.
Pence has become the gatekeeper, "a key entryway to reach officials such as Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who worked for Pence when he was governor of Indiana." Verma is just one high-level government official that came to the job through Pence, the "second White House chief of staff on regulatory issues." Likewise, a lot of the lobbyists going to Pence are old Pence cronies, like William Smith, who "spent more than 13 years as Pence’s chief of staff before founding the lobbying firm Sextons Creek." Sextons Creek didn't register as a lobbying firm until 2017. When it registered, it "listed Pence's office as a point of contact for 11 of its 14 clients, their fees totalling $784,750."
When Pence was governor of Indiana, he appointed Victor Smith as the state’s commerce secretary. Smith is now a principal at lobbying firm Bose Public Affairs Group, which saw its client list grow from 12 to 31 in 2017, with seven of them reporting lobbying contacts with Pence. Another crony comes from Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Jeffrey Miller of Miller Strategies has been lobbying on behalf of energy companies including Energy Transfer Partners, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, but has also been helping Pence in fundraising efforts for the midterms.
These three firms have racked up $6 million worth of lobbying efforts in the first 15 months of the Trump administration—all with Pence's office as the focus. That's just a drop in the bucket, though, of the amount of money being lavished on access to Pence and through him, the administration. It all makes Pence the manager of the swamp, the influence-peddler extraordinaire of the administration. All he'll ask in return is the presidency.