Financial Disclosures Reveal Millions in Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate

Nearly 3,200 financial disclosure records obtained and published by ProPublica reveal a pattern of significant conflicts of interest across Donald Trump's second-term administration.

The records show cases ranging from a Pentagon deputy secretary who oversees a £119.7 billion ($151 billion) missile defence programme while maintaining a financial relationship with the private equity firm whose portfolio companies are winning contracts on that same project, to a top Justice Department official who shut down federal crypto enforcement while personally holding more than £126,000 ($159,000) in digital assets.

The trove of documents, released by ProPublica on 5 March 2026, covers the finances of more than 1,500 federal officials appointed by Trump, including the president and Vice President JD Vance. The records were obtained through a year-long effort by ProPublica reporters Corey G. Johnson, Brandon Roberts, and Al Shaw to compile and analyse public ethics filings submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, the federal agency that oversees conflicts of interest across the executive branch, whose director Trump removed earlier this year and which currently operates without either a director or a chief of staff.

The disclosures arrive in a specific regulatory context. On his first day back in office, Trump rescinded an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that had barred executive branch appointees from working on matters related to their former lobbying clients or topics for two years. Weeks later, Trump fired 17 inspectors general responsible for investigating fraud and corruption across the federal government. Without that architecture of oversight, what the disclosure records reveal has largely gone unchecked.

The Pentagon, Cerberus Capital, and the £119.7 Billion Golden Dome

The most architecturally significant conflict detailed in the ProPublica investigation involves Steve Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management who now serves as deputy secretary of defence, the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon.

Feinberg oversees the office responsible for Golden Dome for America, Trump's proposed space- and land-based missile defence shield modelled on Israel's Iron Dome system, for which the Defence Department has allocated as much as £119.7 billion ($151 billion). The Pentagon began selecting contractors in December 2025, awarding contracts to more than 2,000 firms.

At least four of those firms are owned by Cerberus or count it as a majority investor: North Wind, Stratolaunch, Red River Technology, and NetCentrics Corp. Feinberg filed ethics paperwork stating that he had divested from Cerberus and its related businesses. His financial disclosure records, however, contain an unusual provision: he is permitted to continue contracting with the firm for tax compliance, accounting services, and health care coverage, a financial relationship that documents show was given an open-ended extension, at Feinberg's own request, after he had initially committed to finding alternative providers by April 2026.

The Defence Department told ProPublica that Feinberg does not 'have direct responsibility for any Golden Dome acquisitions,' but declined to say whether he or his office had met with any contractor representatives. What is not disputed is that Space Force General Michael Guetlein, who heads the Golden Dome project, reports directly to Feinberg.

Richard Painter, who served as ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, told ProPublica the arrangement 'creates at least a perception of a conflict of interest.' A Cerberus spokesperson said in a statement that Feinberg 'divested his stake in Cerberus and any funds that it manages,' and that the administrative services 'were pre-approved by the Department of War's Ethics Office and the Office of Government Ethics.'

A separate Pentagon official compounds the picture. Marc Berkowitz, confirmed in December 2025 as assistant secretary of defence for space policy, previously worked as a space industry consultant and vice president for strategic planning at Lockheed Martin. During his confirmation hearing, he identified the Golden Dome as one of his top priorities.

His financial disclosure documents show he receives two monthly pensions from Lockheed and owned between £793,000 ($1 million) and £3.97 million ($5 million) in Lockheed stock. Lockheed received Golden Dome contracts days before Berkowitz's confirmation and has since set up a dedicated Golden Dome webpage. Berkowitz has agreed to divest his Lockheed holdings by 18 March 2026.

Crypto Assets, Stock Trades, and the Revolving Door at the EPA

The Feinberg case is the most detailed, but the ProPublica investigation documents several other parallel patterns. Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal criminal defence attorney and now the second-highest-ranking official at the Department of Justice, shut down federal enforcement against cryptocurrency companies, dealers, and exchanges while personally holding between £126,000 ($159,000) and £385,000 ($485,000) in crypto-related assets, according to his OGE financial disclosure records.

He had committed to selling those assets within 90 days of his Senate confirmation in March 2025. The memo through which he ordered the curtailment of crypto investigations, published by the Justice Department, was issued before he had divested. Six Democratic senators subsequently wrote to Blanche accusing him of a 'glaring' conflict of interest, and a watchdog organisation filed a formal complaint requesting the DOJ inspector general investigate.

A Justice Department spokesperson told ProPublica that Blanche's actions were 'appropriately flagged, addressed and cleared in advance,' but did not respond to questions identifying who had cleared them.

In a separate strand of the same investigation, ProPublica reported in December 2025 that Trump had appointed more than 200 officials who collectively owned, individually or with spouses, between £138.9 million ($175 million) and £269.6 million ($340 million) in cryptocurrency investments at the time they filed their disclosures. Some now hold positions that directly oversee or influence the regulation of the digital assets sector.

Attorney General Pam Bondi presents a different category of concern: securities trading timed to significant governmental events. ProPublica reported in May 2025 that Bondi sold between £793,000 ($1 million) and £3.97 million ($5 million) worth of Trump Media shares on 2 April 2025, the same day Trump held his 'Liberation Day' press conference announcing sweeping new tariffs, after which markets tumbled.

The EPA's Formaldehyde Reversal and the Ethics Architecture That Is No Longer There

At the Environmental Protection Agency, two senior scientists played a central role in revising the agency's assessment of how much formaldehyde people can safely inhale, nearly doubling the previous threshold in a December 2025 announcement that alarmed public health researchers.

ProPublica's investigation, published on 8 December 2025, identified those two scientists as former senior officials at the chemical industry's leading trade group. The EPA's position is that both individuals obtained ethics advice approving their involvement in the formaldehyde project before they participated. Independent scientists and public health advocates disputed the revised threshold, pointing to formaldehyde's status as a known carcinogen associated with leukemia and nasopharyngeal cancer.

The broader finding across all four of these cases, Pentagon contracting, DOJ crypto enforcement, stock trading, and EPA risk assessment, is that the ethics infrastructure that would ordinarily catch or constrain such overlaps has been deliberately weakened. Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office revoking the two-year lobbying ban on his own appointees.

He fired 17 inspectors general in a single evening in January 2025. And he removed the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency that exists to review and enforce the very compliance agreements ProPublica has now made public. Virginia Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House and Treasury Department across four administrations — from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama — and now serves as chief counsel for ethics and corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund, told ProPublica: 'Ethics is in the toilet.'

The White House disputed that characterisation. Spokesperson Anna Kelly told ProPublica in a statement: 'President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. He has also nominated highly-qualified individuals across the Executive Branch who have a wide range of public and private sector backgrounds.' The White House did not respond specifically to the Feinberg, Blanche, Bondi, or EPA findings.

Trump himself, in a January 2026 interview with The New York Times, appeared unconcerned by the broader ethics questions surrounding his family's financial dealings during his presidency. 'I found out nobody cared, and I'm allowed to,' he said.

When the referees are removed from the field, it is left to the public record, and those willing to dig through it — to keep the score.