As several Obama-era officials return to the White House under President Joe Biden, their reunion comes with fuller pockets and deeper ties with corporate interests, according to new financial disclosure reports.
According to ABC News’ analysis of the most recent disclosure reports, many of Biden’s top White House officials, including Ron Stain, staff director Susan Rice, director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, and Jeff Zients, coronavirus coordinator, responded. has significantly increased their wealth over the past few years.
Rice, who is one of the richest members of the Biden White House team, has dramatically increased her wealth since her previous position in the White House during the Obama administration, reporting between $ 36 million and $ 149 million in various assets in her new disclosure document released Saturday morning.
That’s almost three to four times the amount she reported in 2009, when she joined the Obama administration as ambassador to the United Nations. At the time, she reported a total wealth of $ 13.6 million to $ 40.4 million, and the figure did not increase dramatically when she served during his second term as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.
In her most recent submission, Rice reported that it included shares worth between $ 250,000 and $ 5 million in large companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Apple and Microsoft. She also had a significant amount of stock options in Netflix, where she served as a board member, and has earned more than $ 300,000 over the past year from exercising Netflix stock options. In addition, it has reported shares in several oil and gas companies, including $ 1 million to $ 5 million in Canadian multinational natural gas distribution company Enbridge Inc.
Rice, who served as president of her author and consulting firm SERice LLC, has earned about $ 620,000 over the past year from various corporate and academic speaking engagements, and $ 250,000 from book royalties, with her total revenue over the past year between $ 2 million and $ 6 , 7 million.
ABC News has not yet obtained Rice’s ethical agreement, so it is not yet clear whether she will go or sell some of her assets in private companies, or whether she will apologize for matters related to the companies – other than for her shares in Netflix, which she said in her disclosure report that she was going to take off. The White House did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“These White House officials are experienced government leaders whose experience in the private sector in the past has been part of a wide and diverse skill that brings them into government service,” a White House spokesman told ABC News in a statement. . “They returned to the government because of their deep commitment to public service, their desire to help get our people out of this time of crisis, and their strong belief that the government can work for the American people.”
Klain, a longtime advisor to Biden, has also tripled his wealth since 2009, according to a comparison with his past and new revelations. When he joined the Obama administration in 2009 as chief of staff of Biden, Klain reportedly owned between $ 1.4 million and $ 3.5 million in assets, and now joins the Biden administration with between $ 4 , 4 million and $ 12.2 million in various assets.
Much of Klain’s wealth comes from various assets associated with his service. In 2020, he received nearly $ 2 million in salary from venture capital firm Revolution LLC, where he was executive vice president and general counsel, compared to $ 1 million he received as a salary earlier in 2009.
Zients is the richest Biden official to disclose assets on Saturday night, surpassing Vanita Gupta, Biden’s nominees as co-attorney general, in his total assets. The White House has not yet released all the disclosures requested by ABC News.
Zients reported owning $ 89.3 million to $ 442.8 million in assets, including various investment funds, real estate and cash shares. He sold his shares in his private investment firm, Cranemere Group, as well as $ 1 million worth of shares in Facebook, where he served as a board member.
He said he had earned between $ 10.4 million and $ 28 million in income over the past year, including his seven-figure salary from his investment firm, as well as other seven-figure assets he disposed of.
His total wealth has more than doubled since he first joined Obama’s White House as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, when he reported assets between $ 45.2 million and $ 205.7 million.
In her disclosure report, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reported that they had received a fee of more than $ 5,000 from Zients, although the report did not provide any further details about the transaction. Her assets have also grown significantly since her first job in the White House during the Obama administration. In 2009, Psaki reported between $ 32,000 and $ 130,000 in assets and $ 125,000 in income, but in 2021 she reported that her wealth increased at least tenfold to $ 1.5 million in assets with an annual income of approximately $ 647,742.
Much of her income over the past year has come from Evergreen Consulting LLC, which she founded, and the think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has also worked as a CNN contributor and advisor to WestExec, a consulting firm founded in 2017 by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with whom several Obama-era officials worked. In addition to the $ 5,000 Zients paid her, she was paid the same consulting fee by Lyft, among a handful of other companies.
Deese’s wealth has also increased dramatically since 2009, when he took his first job in the White House as Obama’s special assistant for economic policy. In 2015, just a few months after his role as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Deese reportedly owned between $ 81,000 and $ 215,000 in assets – but now, as a member of the Biden administration, he has $ 2 million and $ 7.2 reported. million in assets. Prior to joining the Biden administration, Deese earned $ 2.3 million from investment firm BlackRock as the global head of sustainable investment, compared to the $ 175,000 salary he earned during his final year as deputy OMB director. received from Obama.
High-ranking government officials usually sell their financial interests in specific private enterprises that they may regulate, as required by the ethical rules, or withdraw themselves from matters that may affect their personal financial interests. Some Biden White House officials have indicated in their disclosure reports that they will relinquish their corporate interests, but the full extent of their plans to avoid conflicts of interest is not yet known because ABC News has not yet reached their ethical agreements. not.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon was hired as a consultant by General Electric, Lyft, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Gates Ventures as clients of Precision Strategies, a marketing agency in which she was a founder. . measurement.
She reported between $ 2.2 million and $ 4.7 million in assets on her disclosure form and more than $ 800,000 in revenue over the past year, which includes $ 426,067 deferred compensation and severance pay from Precision Strategies, in addition to $ 50 000’s salary of the firm. She also earned more than $ 110,000 as Beto O’Rourke’s campaign manager before becoming Biden’s campaign manager on a salary of more than $ 190,000.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s current national security adviser, is another multimillionaire and reports assets between $ 7.5 million and $ 27.5 million that he and his wife, Margaret Goodlander, a former clerk at the now attorney general’s , Judge Merrick Garland, is being held. Much of his wealth comes from a long list of residential and commercial real estate spread across Florida and New Hampshire, and he also reportedly owns five to six-figure dollars worth of shares in private companies, including Abbott Labs, American Express , Facebook. , FedEx, Google, Merck, Visa and Verizon.
Sullivan’s salary from consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners last year was $ 138,000, and among its clients for business consultations were Uber, LEGO, MasterCard and Standard Chartered Bank. He also holds academic positions at Yale and Dartmouth.
In the office of First Lady Jill Biden, Chief of Staff Julissa Reynoso was a partner at law firm Winston & Strawn, where she earned more than $ 1.5 million last year with a $ 150,000 bonus. She reported between $ 4.1 million and $ 14.8 million in assets and included up to $ 1.9 million in total income over the past year, including income from rental properties in New York and Miami, as well as commercial properties in Sioux Falls. South Dakota and Henderson, North Carolina, among others. She also listed a vacant beachfront property in the Dominican Republic on her disclosure form.
The revelations were provided to ABC News by the White House on Saturday.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.