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Trump’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, brings a complex political profile, with ties to Russian oligarchs and Chinese surveillance firms.
Before joining Trump’s 2024 campaign, Wiles was a co-chair at a firm that lobbied for sanctioned individuals and companies. A lobbyist who recommended Wiles to lead US President-Elect Donald Trump’s campaign represented a Russian-born oligarch connected to the Russian President Vladimir Putin and a state-owned oil corporation Rosneft.
Wiles’ ex-husband has ties to a Kremlin-linked lobbyist known for attending the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where “dirt” on Clinton was offered on the Russian Government’s behalf. Wiles’ daughter failed the White House background check.
Examining her lobbying work and personal connections reveals the scale and reach of foreign affiliations, raising concerns over potential foreign influence within Trump’s incoming administration.
Introduction to Trump: Susie Wiles and Brian Ballard
Susie Wiles, Trump’s new Chief of Staff, led his campaign in Florida. Wiles met with Trump in New York and was named the Trump campaign’s Florida co-chairwoman a few weeks later. She was introduced to Trump by Brian Ballard, a lobbyist who has a close relationship with Trump for nearly 30 years.
Ballard served as Trump’s Florida lobbyist and was one of the top fundraisers for Trump’s campaign, raising millions for his reelection. During Trump’s 2016—2020 presidency, he helped clients gain influence with the administration. Some of Ballard’s clients warrant closer scrutiny given his longstanding, influential ties to the White House.
Described as “the most powerful lobbyist in Trump’s Washington,” represented Russian oligarch and billionaire David Yakobashvili, who has close connections with Putin and is involved with Rosneft and Russia’s defence industry. In 2018, Yakobashvili paid Ballard $450,000 to lobby the US government on immigration and trade policy.
Yakobashvili’s close, long-term business connections with Putin deserve attention as his attendance at the Kremlin meeting with the Russian President is not accidental.
Yakobashvili’s ownership of valuable land, often gifted to Putin’s loyalists, might point to his privileged position within the Kremlin hierarchy. Yakobashvili co-owns a former poultry breeding facility and surrounding territory in Rublevka, one of Russia’s most expensive real estate areas near Moscow, close to Putin’s Novo-Ogaryovo estate.
US Justice Department Case Against Paul Manafort Re-Opens Trump Campaign’s Ukraine, Russia and Cambridge Analytica Connections
As the US Justice Department sues pardoned Paul Manafort over undisclosed foreign banks accounts, Zamaan Qureshi follows the financial links with Putin’s oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a Russian intelligence agent
The two-hectare property here could be valued at over $22.7 million. In the mid-2000s, land in this area was gifted or sold at symbolic prices to Putin’s former bodyguards and their families by Gorki-2, a company in which Yakobashvili held a 29% stake, according to the most recent report from 2015. Among the landowners are former security officials, along with their relatives. Other landowners include an assistant to President Putin, the wife of Dmitry Medvedev’s security chief, and Arkady Rotenberg, Putin’s close ally and childhood friend.
On the former poultry farm, Yakobashvili built a major juice and dairy producer in Russia, Wimm-Bill-Dann. In 2011, PepsiCo acquired Wimm-Bill-Dann for approximately $5.4 billion, marking its largest deal outside the United States.
Defense Industry and Rosneft Connections
Yakobashvili’s involvement in the Russian defence industry is also noteworthy. He served on the board of JSFC Sistema, the largest diversified public financial corporation in Russia and the CIS. The corporation owned RTI Systems, one of the largest defense companies in the world, developing control and communication systems and radio equipment for Russian weapons. The chairman of the board of directors and owner of 64% of the shares of JSFC Sistema is Vladimir Yevtushenkov, a Putin-aligned oligarch. He may have been an intermediary in introducing pro-Russian former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to individuals involved in sparking hostilities in Donbas in 2014.
Yakobashvili’s connections to Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft are significant due to the allegations surrounding the company’s involvement in Trump’s election campaign.
Yakobashvili is an investor in Petrocas Energy Group, a Cyprus-based company that owns a network of over one hundred gas stations in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, as well as two oil terminals in Georgia.
In 2014, Rosneft purchased 49% of Petrocas shares. Yakobashvili retained the controlling 51% stake in the company. In 2020, after the US imposed sanctions on Rosneft for its dealings with Venezuela, the company sold more than a third of its seaborne oil product exports to small trading firms, including Petrocas. Rosneft later sold its stake in Petrocas due to Western sanctions imposed on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
