With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. STEVE RICCHETTI’s kids are a precocious lot. The counselor to the president and longtime Biden consigliere has four children and three of them have landed low- to mid-level jobs in the Biden administration. Today, the Treasury Department announced that J.J. RICCHETTI will be a special assistant in the office of legislative affairs. He joins his sister, SHANNON RICCHETTI, who is a deputy associate director for the White House social secretary, and one of his brothers, DANIEL RICCHETTI, who is a senior advisor in the office of the under secretary of State for arms control and international security, in the Biden administration. Asked if Steve played any role in the hiring process, the White House declined to comment. A White House official who declined to be named sent a response on deep background—meaning we can paraphrase but can’t quote it—arguing that the Ricchetti children are qualified for their positions and have similar experience levels as their predecessors. The Ricchetti reach doesn’t stop at the Biden administration. The fourth Ricchetti offspring, TYLER “TIGER” RICCHETTI , works on the Hill as a legislative assistant for Rep. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-Mich.), according to POLITICO's congressional directory. Her office did not respond when asked to confirm he still works there. Steve Ricchetti has known Dingell for a while, having attended her 25th wedding anniversary party in 2006. Tyler/Tiger also dropped an EP earlier this year called “Bummer Boy” and — honestly — it’s not terrible. Spotify link here. But the family’s main business does appear to be politics. Steve’s brother Jeff is a high-powered lobbyist who lobbied the White House earlier this year on behalf of the Canadian energy company TC Energy and three pharmaceutical companies through his firm, Ricchetti Inc. He has said he hasn’t lobbied his brother and told The Washington Post last week that he would “no longer lobby the White House Office” at all. He didn’t respond to West Wing Playbook’s request for comment. While Steve may have the most children in the administration, he’s certainly not alone among Biden’s top aides to have family in the fold. BRUCE REED’s daughter, JULIA REED, is Biden’s day scheduler. SARAH DONILON — daughter of Presidential Personnel Office director CATHY RUSSELL and niece of senior adviser MIKE DONILON — is a special assistant in the National Security Council’s Asia directorate (similar to the Ricchettis, the White House official said Julia and Sarah also had relevant experience for the roles). It’s perhaps not a surprise that the Biden administration is full of family connections. Until recently, JOE BIDEN’s political operation was dominated by his family. His sister, VAL BIDEN OWENS, ran every one of his campaigns except for 2020. His brothers Frank and Jimmy were often in the mix, as were his sons Beau and Hunter. As president, however, Biden has tried to publicly put distance between his family and his administration. That’s in part because his brothers and Hunter leveraged their connection to him for financial gain during his Senate career and vice presidency — a fact that Republicans have continually tried to use to their advantage — and also partly because Biden has tried to make an ethical break from the Trump administration, where many family members scored high-level posts. As such, Val is not in the administration nor are any of his other family members, a White House official confirmed. The Ricchetti clan has had to navigate similar issues over the course of Steve and Jeff Ricchetti's political careers. Steve Ricchetti worked with JOHN PODESTA in the Clinton White House, while their brothers — Jeff Ricchetti and TONY PODESTA — worked together at Tony Podesta’s lobbying firm. ''The Medicis controlled everything,'' Tony Podesta told The New York Times in 2000, referring to the Renaissance rulers of Florence. ''We have it split into two families.'' Reached for comment this afternoon, Tony Podesta said he’d made the remark in jest. “This was when ‘The Sopranos’ was still on,” he said by way of explanation. Tony Podesta said he and his brother had been "extraordinarily careful" not to discuss their work with each other while John Podesta was in government. He added that he didn’t see anything wrong with the Biden administration hiring Ricchetti’s children to work in relatively low-level jobs, even if they might not have gotten the jobs if “their names were Smith and Jones.” “This is not President Kennedy selecting his brother to be the attorney general,” he said. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you SCOTT MULHAUSER? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. | 
