In addition to Yellen, Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, revealed the clients he advised through WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm he co-founded with other Obama administration alumni. These customers included investment giant Blackstone, Bank of America, Facebook, Uber, McKinsey & Company, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, pharmaceutical company Gilead, investment bank Lazard, Boeing, AT&T, Royal Bank of Canada, LinkedIn and venerable Sotheby’s auctions.
The disclosures opened up WestExec’s list of closed customers, which the company had refused to disclose. WestExec paid Blinken nearly $ 1.2 million in in the past two years, according to the lawsuit, with another estimated value of $ 250,000 to $ 500,000 due for his work this year.
Blinken signed a pledge to sell his stake in WestExec, valued at between $ 500,000 and $ 1 million, according to the disclosure. He also plans to divest his stake in WestExec Ventures, a sister venture capital firm, according to the document. Its stake in WestExec Ventures is valued at between $ 1 million and $ 5 million.
Biden’s choice to be director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, was also a director and consultant at WestExec. Haines reported $ 180,000 in “consulting fees” from Palantir, a data mining company that has government contracts with agencies like the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Silicon Valley-based company was founded by Peter Thiel, a prominent pro-Trump conservative in the technology world.
Haines’s biography at the Brookings Institute, where she was a senior non-resident researcher, boasted of her work in Palantir until this summer, when she began advising Biden’s campaign, The Intercept reported for the first time.
A transition official said that Haines was “mainly focused on [Palantir’s] diversity and inclusion efforts, especially by increasing gender diversity “and that she” mentored some of the company’s notable young women and suggested ways in which the company could promote diversity and inclusion “.
Yellen’s corporate earnings can create more thorny issues. Along with its disclosure, Yellen pledged to go to Treasury ethics lawyers to “seek written authorization to participate personally and substantially in any specific matter” involving a company for which she received compensation in the previous year.
Yellen last accepted Citi speaker fees in October 2020, for example, which means she would need to consult with the department ethics lawyers until October 2021.
While Yellen has garnered much praise from progressives so far, her millions of dollars in revenue from major banks probably raises doubts about how close she is to Wall Street. Hillary Clinton faced a political backlash from the left during the 2016 campaign for money earned from Wall Street speeches after she left the State Department.
A spokeswoman for Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Who criticized the “revolving door” between government officials and corporations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The progressive Massachusetts senator previously called Yellen an “excellent choice”.
The transition officer defended Yellen’s lecture fees. “Take a look at his history of repression – he is not someone who makes a fuss when it comes to bad actors or bad behavior,” said the official. “You can expect that it will bring the same high ethical standards and strict application philosophy to the Treasury.”
Victoria Guida contributed to this report.