Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max Last October, ANTHONY RUSSO, T-Mobile vice president and lobbyist, huddled with President JOE BIDEN’s counselor STEVE RICCHETTI in the West Wing, according to White House visitor logs. It was a coveted meeting with a top administration official. But the fact that Russo — who was joined by a “G.M. Sievert” (T-Mobile’s CEO is G. MICHAEL SIEVERT) — got an audience with a top administration official is not terribly surprising. The President is his daughter’s godfather and Russo is a former Biden aide. Decades ago, Biden asked his father, the former congressman and lobbyist MARTY RUSSO, to help coordinate his potential 1988 presidential campaign among House lawmakers. The White House has attempted to publicly distance itself from K Street by, among other things, putting in place guardrails to prevent departing staffers from finding immediate lobbying work. But those with connections to the Biden world find themselves cashing in, even if the administration does not acquiesce to every ask. TheGroup DC — which counts former Biden staffer SUDAFI HENRY as a partner — has seen its lobbying revenues more than triple between the first quarter of 2020 and 2022. Since then, it has signed a host of new high-profile clients, including Pfizer, Lyft, and BP America, among others. Its lobbying revenue this quarter was about $2.3 million, according to filings submitted as of 4 p.m. (firms can submit their quarterly filings up through midnight this evening). Henry served as director of legislative affairs for the then-Vice President Biden, and the firm’s other employees include a top former staffer to the White House’s main Hill liaison, CEDRIC RICHMOND. A review of White House visitor logs reveals that a number of Democratic lobbyists have visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. On Dec. 18, Henry was among a group of them who toured the East Wing. ALFRED MOTTUR, a lobbyist for Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, who represents, among others, AT&T and McDonald’s, was on that visit. Mottur isn’t a Biden alum. But another lobbyist who was there that day, CHRISTOPHER PUTALA of Putala Strategies, is. Putala worked for Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And, like Henry, his firm has found more work during the Biden presidency. His clients include the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Oracle, and Comcast, among others. Between 2020 and 2022, the firm's lobbying revenue more than tripled. Putala Strategies reported $1.1 million in revenue the first quarter of this year, according to filings under the Lobbying Disclosure Act as of 4 p.m. The firm run by JEFF RICCHETTI — the brother of presidential counselor Steve — saw its revenues jump from $165,000 to $790,000 between the first quarter of 2020 and 2022 (Ricchetti has said he would not lobby the West Wing). Even those with some recent unfriendly press coverage continue to find new work. A firm led by VINCENT ROBERTI — which ended its relationship with the company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline amid sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — recently registered to lobby Phoenix Tailings, a company “extracting and refining rare earth metals from domestic mining waste,” according to a public filing. Roberti’s firm website at one point described him as an adviser to Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign. But that line has since been erased. “They know a lot of the people that are still in the orbit, so they end up being able to get good answers and what not,” one Democratic lobbyist said of Biden-tied lobbyists. “They get good information.” In a statement, ANDREW BATES , a White House spokesman, said, “The President is proud to have established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, including unprecedented rules that crack down on lobbying and the revolving door.” He pointed to an Opinion piece in POLITICO by BARACK OBAMA’s ethics czar NORMAN EISEN praising Biden’s ethics plan, among other stories about the ethics rules. There are Biden alums across K Street. The President’s former chief of staff, DANIEL O’BRIEN, is executive vice president and head of government relations at Fox Corporation. His former Senate staffer, ELIZABETH HUNGER, is now a lobbyist for Etsy. His former director of communications, JAY CARNEY, is a senior vice president at Amazon, where he oversees public policy though is not registered to lobby. Democratic lobbyists say it remains hard to influence the Biden administration but they have found it more friendly than when the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, was in office. One lobbyist said the Obama White House was more vocal about its aversion to lobbyists, which created a culture that prompted lobbyists to deregister and hide from public disclosure. "It’s a little better than normal because they're not out there bashing like the Obama administration did,” the person said. If lobbyists are feeling freer now to come out of the shadows, it was evident this month. TONY PODESTA, a Democratic operative whose firm shuttered after getting tied up by then-special counsel ROBERT MUELLER’s investigation, registered to represent the Libyan government. TEXT US — Are you BRANDON THOMPSON, a senior associate director in the personnel office? We want to hear from you (we’ll keep you anonymous). Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com , reach out to Hailey via Twitter here, or text/Signal/Wickr/WhatsApp Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427. MEA CULPA: Yesterday, we misspelled the name of The New York Times’ JODI KANTOR. It’s Jodi, not Jody. Sorry to her and all the other Jodi’s we may have offended.
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