President Trump hired 281 lobbyists to his administration by the halfway point of his first term, which is four times more than President Obama hired six years into office.
One lobbyist was hired for every 14 political appointments made, according to a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis released Tuesday.
Trump had named more ex-lobbyists to his cabinet by September than Obama and President Bush did in their eight years in the White House, The Associated Press reported at the time. That includes recent additions Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Former intelligence chief Dan Coats was a lobbyist for the firm King & Spalding before joining the administration and the firm announced on Tuesday he is rejoining after leaving his post in August.
https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/465845-former-intelligence-chief-coats-rejoins-law-firm
"Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has rejoined the law and lobbying firm King & Spalding, the company announced Tuesday.
Coats, 76, will be a senior policy adviser in the firm’s national security team and based in Washington. He will advise clients about how the national security landscape implicates their businesses, emerging tools and processes employed by the U.S. and other governments to mitigate national security threats and the congressional process.
He was the intelligence chief for President Trump’s administration from March 2017 to August 2019.
Coats, a Republican, was counsel and senior policy adviser at King & Spalding from 2005 to 2010 following his first stint in the Senate. He was also U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005.
He left the firm to represent Indiana in the Senate again before retiring in 2017. He served on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“As a former Senator, diplomat and the point person on national intelligence, Dan has insight and relationships throughout the executive branch and on the Hill that will make a critical difference for our clients,” Wick Sollers, head of the firm’s government matters practice group, said in a press release."