From Trump Whisperer To West Wing Pariah: What Went Wrong For Lobbyist Brian Ballard

On a Sunday morning in early March, President Donald Trump greenlit a Truth Social post promoting a “Crypto Strategic Reserve.” Hours later, he felt like he'd been played.

That weekend at Mar-A-Lago, an employee of the lobby shop run by Brian Ballard who was attending a donor event at the resort, had personally buttonholed the president and encouraged him multiple times to tout his desire to promote the industry. She even gave him a copy of a message she thought he should write.

It was only after he posted that missive that Trump realized a company behind one of the tokens named in the post, Ripple Labs, was a Ballard client. He was furious and felt like he’d been used, according to two people familiar with the incident who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“He is not welcome in anything anymore,” the president told associates at the White House that month, the people said, referring to Ballard.

Ballard has been persona non grata in the West Wing ever since.

Since Trump’s return to Washington, Ballard has established a reputation as perhaps the go-to lobbyist in town. Stories about his firm often note that he once employed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. They routinely mention that his relationship with Trump goes back decades. Ballard represented the Trump Organization on and off over the years and he’s been a top fundraiser for the president’s campaigns.

His image as a Trump whisperer has allowed his firm to rack up a staggering 130 new clients since the November election, including Chevron, JP Morgan, Palantir, Netflix, Bayer, United Airlines and T-Mobile. In April, POLITICO’s parent company, Axel Springer, hired Ballard Partners to engage with the administration.

Ballard’s firm hauled in $14 million during the first three months of 2025 — more than triple its lobbying revenues from the same time a year ago.

But there is a chasm between Ballard’s reputation and how he’s currently perceived in the West Wing.

Ballard has been at least temporarily iced out of the White House after the crypto post, as White House staff were instructed not to take meetings with him, according to the three people familiar with the matter. But the irritation with Ballard goes beyond that incident, five people close to Trump said. Some White House officials believe that he is cashing in on Trump’s name, touting relationships with the president and Wiles that are not nearly as close as advertised.

“One way to get yourself in the doghouse is for the president to think you're trading on his name,” said another close Trump ally, who said Ballard “overstates his importance and value.”

“The president understands that lobbyists make money — he gets that. But I mean, to go out there and brag and hold yourself out?”

The White House declined to comment.

In a statement, Ballard said he and his firm “are accustomed to false accusations from unnamed sources due to the success our firm has enjoyed.” He told POLITICO he has never touted his relationships with people in the West Wing to try to win clients, and he disputed the notion that he has been frozen out as well.

There is some evidence that he is not completely cut off. POLITICO has viewed invitations sent to Ballard for Trump fundraisers and records of a scheduled call with a senior Trump administration official since the March incident. And Ballard clients have secured face time with senior people in the administration, including earlier this week when the president met with executives from the NFL, which Ballard represents.

“[D]espite the efforts of these unnamed sources, Ballard Partners will continue to deliver results and effective advocacy for our clients as we have done for more than 25 years,” he said.

As for the Truth Social incident, a Ballard associate said there was never an effort to mislead the president about the missive.

But the situation appears to have caused Ballard some business heartburn. Some Ballard clients have reached out to other Trump allies to try to get meetings with the president or his inner circle, according to two of the people.

Others close to the inner circle were more blunt.

“Ballard is making himself out to be this all-powerful Trump lobbyist with unfettered access to the administration, but that’s simply not true,” said one of the four people.

Avalanche of new business

Since Trump won in November, Ballard has seen a deluge in new business, especially as Trump has brought to bear the full weight of his bully pulpit against perceived enemies.

Ballard’s clients have seen some wins under Trump. TikTok, which hired the firm last fall, is still online in the U.S. thanks to Trump’s vow not to enforce a ban on it temporarily. BMW, another Ballard client, will benefit from a partial tariff reprieve Trump announced last week, along with the rest of the auto industry.

One of the firm's first clients in D.C. was tobacco giant Reynolds American, which makes the best-selling menthol cigarette in the U.S. and went all in on Trump in last year’s election. That bet paid off days into his new administration, when Trump withdrew a proposal to ban menthol cigarettes.

And Ripple Labs, the crypto firm behind the XRP token named in Trump’s crypto announcement, saw Trump’s top financial regulator drop its appeal in a landmark enforcement case involving the company.

Ballard has also been a rainmaker for the president. A formidable fundraiser who chaired the Florida finance committees of every GOP presidential nominee since John McCain in 2008, he raised tens of millions of dollars for Trump’s presidential campaigns and allied PACs. He served as finance vice chair for Trump’s 2016 inaugural committee.

Ballard set up shop in D.C. shortly after Trump was sworn in in 2017, as the business community and global leaders scrambled to make sense of the political novice in the White House. He quickly reeled in prominent clients and by the end of the firm’s first year in Washington, Ballard Partners was among the top-earning firms on K Street.

The firm’s lobbying revenues declined while Trump was out of office — though Ballard, which has a number of Democratic lobbyists on staff, remained competitive with other D.C. lobbying stalwarts.

Ballard Partners’ Washington office was its first location outside of Florida. Now, the firm has outposts in nearly a dozen cities across three continents. Last year, Ballard launched a series of strategic partnerships with government affairs firms around the globe, including in Canada, Japan, South Korea, Latin America, the U.K. and Italy.

The history of Ballard and Wiles

In some ways, Ballard’s reputation as the top Trump administration lobbyist was always amiss, given his past with the president’s chief of staff. Many Trump insiders who admire Wiles believe that Ballard pushed her out of his firm at a time when Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was trying to ruin her career.

Wiles had worked at Ballard Partners in Florida for years before departing in 2019, citing a health issue. At the time, DeSantis reportedly spread word that he told Ballard to fire her — though Ballard, like Wiles, has said that her exit had nothing to do with DeSantis.

Some thought their relationship has recovered since then. Wiles put on a good face as Ballard started to come into the fold during the 2024 campaign, declining to hold a grudge, two people close to her say. Plus, the money he put in Trump’s campaign coffers was particularly welcome.

“Susie puts the campaign first,” said one of these Trump associates.

Still, much of Trump’s inner circle — who are deeply loyal to the chief of staff — continued to view him with suspicion.

“People don’t forget,” the Trump associate said.

In his statement, Ballard said that “Susie Wiles has been and will be my dear friend well beyond our time in politics and anyone who suggests otherwise is badly misinformed.”

Ballard’s client list has also raised some eyebrows inside the White House. He recently signed on Harvard and PBS, both of which the president has gone after.

But the Truth Social episode was a turning point. That weekend, the Ballard employee at Mar-A-Lago more than once asked Trump to post the missive.

“He’d been brushing her off — then she kept bothering him and then he finally just gave it to a staffer to put out,” said one of the people familiar with what happened.

Within minutes of the president’s posting, a furious David Sacks — the White House “crypto czar” — called Wiles to complain, according to three people familiar with what occurred. The White House was hosting a crypto summit in Washington the following week, and it looked bad that the president was singling out some companies for praise but not others.

Wiles, who hadn’t been with the president that morning, started working the phones trying to find out what happened. Soon White House officials realized that one of the clients in the Truth Social Post was Ballard’s — and that the tweet hadn’t even mentioned Trump’s own budding crypto company.

Trump would later follow up on the message in a second Truth Social post, adding the names of other crypto companies. But by then, it was too late — and Trump was furious.

Trump’s aides were incensed, too, accusing Ballard of assigning his employee to get Trump to hawk his client. One of them, a top aide to the president, called and yelled at Ballard.