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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.
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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.
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The Petrocas Energy Group was allegedly involved in transporting Russian-sanctioned oil into Georgia. Ukraine has sanctioned Yakobashvili for providing material or financial assistance to activities that compromise and endanger Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence.
Brain Ballard’s company, Ballard Partners, worked on lobbying a case involving Rosneft, helping an Indian company, Reliance Industries Ltd, to avoid sanctions for importing Venezuela crude oil. Reliance, the largest cash-paying client of PdVSA, a state-owned Venezuelan oil company, purchased PdVSA’s crude oil through Rosneft Trading SA, the Geneva-based trading unit of the Russian oil giant, to bypass US sanctions.
Mercury and Russian Interests: Susie Wiles and Bryan Lanza
Susie Wiles was a co-chair at Mercury Public Affairs. Another Mercury lobbyist and a partner, Bryan Lanza, a former transition aide to Trump, lobbied to remove sanctions from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s energy and aluminium firm conglomerate EN+ Group in 2018. The US Treasury Department had imposed sanctions on Deripaska and his companies.
The US Department of the Treasury said that “Deripaska does not separate himself from the Russian state. He has also acknowledged possessing a Russian diplomatic passport, and claims to have represented the Russian government in other countries. Deripaska has been investigated for money laundering and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering. There are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a businessman, and had links to a Russian organized crime group.”
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Lanza did not represent Deripaska directly. He represented the former British energy minister, Lord Gregory Barker, the board chairman of EN+ Group. Deripaska’s ownership in the company was reduced from 70% to below 50% to avoid US sanctions. Lord Barker was listed as Mercury’s client but Lanza was not listed as lobbyist for Barker or EN+ Group on the disclosure from Mercury.
Lanza did disclose the client in a separate filing. EN+ was removed from the sanctions list in January 2019. Lord Barker resigned as chairman of EN+ in March 2022, after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, amid intense scrutiny of companies linked to sanctioned Russian oligarchs, alleged by authorities in the US, EU, and UK. The London Stock Exchange suspended trading in EN+ along with more than 30 other Russian-linked firms, in March 2022.
Lanza appeared on CNN between Oct 2017–May 2018 as a Trump surrogate, attacking Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference while representing a Russian firm seeking to make the US government drop the sanctions.
On 8 November 2024, Lanza told the BBC that “the incoming administration will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling the country to gain back territory occupied by Russia.” A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team later denied that Lanza spoke for Trump.
Both Wiles and Lanza lobbied for Chinese technology companies. The Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision has paid Mercury $5.5 million since 2015. Hikvision supplied surveillance tech used to target the Uighur ethnic minority in China. Amnesty International found the company’s surveillance equipment was also being used in the West Bank.
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Mercury and pro-Russian Ukraine Political Party
Mercury has also undergone scrutiny for its role in the Ukrainian lobbying operation involving Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, in Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the election. The firm has denied wrongdoing.
Mercury lobbied on behalf of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a nonprofit tied to former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Yanukovych. Mercury was recruited by future Trump campaign chairperson Paul Manafort and worked to sway American public opinion in favor of Ukraine’s pro-Russian government and to undercut American public sympathy for Yulia Tymoshenko, an imprisoned rival of Yanukovych, by placing positive articles in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press.
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Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, directed two Washington lobbying firms, Mercury and the Podesta Group, between 2012 and 2014 to set up meetings between a top Ukrainian official and senators and congressmen on influential committees involving Ukrainian interests. Manafort oversaw the lobbying efforts and spoke by phone to Mercury and the Podesta Group. Both Manafort and Gates failed to disclose their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.
Mercury retroactively filed with FARA within the Justice Department. Mercury’s founder, Vin Weber, said his firm was aware of Manafort’s and Gates’ affiliation with Ukraine’s political party but denied Gates’ participation in Mercury’s lobbying work.
In August 2016, a New York Times report claimed that secret ledgers showed $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Manafort from the Yanukovych administration.
Manafort had ties with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, indirectly represented by Mercury’s Bryan Lanza. Manafort used an intermediary to offer Deripaska private briefings about the election. Robert Mueller’s team later noted in a March court filing that the intermediary “had ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”
Wiles’ Family Ties to Kremlin Lobbying Efforts
A known GOP operative and lobbyist Lanny Wiles, ex-husband of Susie, has over 15 years of work ties with a Kremlin-linked lobbyist. Rinat Akhmetshin, a US citizen since 2009 and a Washington lobbyist, has close connections with a former FSB deputy head and a top aide to Putin, Viktor Ivanov.
Akhmetshin sought consulting work with the Ukrainian pro-Russian political party of Viktor Yanukovych who fled to Russia in 2014 and was accused of being involved in various hacking schemes.
Lanny Wiles said about Akmetishin, “I think he works for us. I don’t think he works for them. But I don’t know what he really does.”
Wiles and Akhmetshin worked together to undo the Magnitsky Act, a law imposing sanctions on Russian officials tied to human rights abuses. Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya also worked on this $240,000 lobbying campaign.
In June 2016, Veselnitskaya and Akhmetishin met Don Trump Jr, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower, after Veselnitskaya’s offer of “dirt” on Clinton on behalf of the Russian government.
Around the time of the Trump Tower meeting, Akhmetshin received a series of flagged payments, including a large sum from a Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, whose company, Prevezon, faced US money laundering charges connected to a $230 million tax fraud scheme. Katsyv’s family held high-level Russian government positions, closely aligned with Kremlin insiders.
Veselnitskaya, Katsyv’s lawyer, had her own network of Russian officials from Putin’s inner circle and was accused by the US of secretly coordinating with Russian authorities during the Prevezon case.
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Bank records show Wiles paid Akhmetshin $72,500 between January 2016 and April 2017 for “undisclosed services.” The payment flow — Wiles to Akhmetshin — contradicted public statements that Akhmetshin paid Wiles for consulting. Politico reported that Akhmetshin suggested Wiles did not need to register as a foreign agent since he’d be working for law firm BakerHostetler. After ending formal lobbying after new Magnitsky provisions in December 2016, payments from Wiles continued. Investigators noted discrepancies in public narratives, as Wiles’ company allegedly funded Akhmetshin, not the reverse.
Following the Trump Tower meeting, Lanny Wiles not just reportedly saved a seat for Veselnitskaya at a June 2016 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on US policy toward Putin’s Russia, but organized a dinner with Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin, and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, one of Putin’s closest US allies, on the guest list.
Rohrabacher promoted legislation linked to Akhmetshin’s lobbying. Lanny Wiles and Rohrabacher were friends since they worked for the Reagan administration.
In June 2021, a complaint alleged that Susie Wiles, at the time Ron DeSantis’s campaign chair, obtained foreign contributions from Russia through Akhmetshin in the form of voter suppression and social media influence, allegedly violating the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Wiles denied these claims; so did Akhmetshin, stating that payments from Lanny Wiles were for an unrelated energy project in Central Asia. The complaint was dismissed.
Wiles’ daughter, Caroline Wiles, failed a National Security Questionnaire for security clearance in 2016.
The connections between GOP political operatives and Russian interests and the intricate network of influence need to be publicised and reported in the interest of national security.