In addition to Yellen, Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee as secretary of state, announced the clients he advised through WestExec Advisors, the consulting firm he co-founded with other Obama administration alumni. Clients 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 the esteemed Sotheby’s. auction house.
The disclosure broke WestExec’s meticulous client list, which the firm had earlier refused to disclose. WestExec paid Blinken almost $ 1.2 million the past two years, according to the filing, with another estimated $ 250,000 to $ 500,000 for his work this year.
Blinken has entered into a futures journal to sell its stake in WestExec, which is reportedly valued at between $ 500,000 and $ 1 million. He also plans to sell his stake in WestExec Ventures, a sister venture capital firm, according to the documentation. 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 principal and consultant at WestExec. Haines reported $ 180,000 ‘consulting fees’ from Palantir, a data mining company that had government contracts with agencies such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Silicon Valley-based company was founded by Peter Thiel, a prominent Trump conservative in the tech world.
Haines’ biography at the Brookings Institute, where she was a non-resident senior fellow, boasted about her Palantir work until this summer, when she began advising the Biden campaign, reports The Intercept.
A transition official said Haines’ mainly on [Palantir’s] diversity and inclusion efforts, in particular the increase in gender diversity ”and that she” mentored some of the business’s remarkable young women and suggested ways in which the business could promote diversity and inclusion “.
Yellen’s corporate earnings can cause more difficult problems. Along with her disclosure, Yellen promised to go to the Treasury’s ethics advocates to ‘seek written authorization to personally and materially participate in any specific matter’ involving a firm for which she had received compensation the previous year.
Yellen, for example, last accepted Citi’s consulting money in October 2020, which means she has to consult the departments ethical lawyers until October 2021.
Although Yellen has so far mostly garnered praise from progressives, her multi-million dollar income from big banks is likely to raise questions about how close she is to Wall Street. During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton faced political setbacks from the left for the 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 had earlier called Yellen an “excellent choice.”
The transition officer defended Yellen’s speech money. “Look at her record of application – this is not someone who beats when it comes to bad actors or bad behavior,” the official said. “You can expect her to bring the same high ethical standards and strict enforcement philosophy to the treasury.”
Victoria Guida contributed to this report.