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Ballard Denies Susie Wiles 'Pay-For-Play' Accusations

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Update (1750ET): Hours after publication, Ballard Partners notified ZeroHedge that they do not, and never have represented Pfizer. 

"Ballard Partners does not represent Pfizer and never has," according to the firm. "Federal law requires lobbying firms to publicly register their lobbying clients under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, and those registrations are posted on public databases kept by the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate. Ballard Partners has never filed a registration for Pfizer. A firm cannot have a “number one client” that does not appear anywhere in its public disclosures."

We have accordingly edited this piece to reflect this. Furthermore, all statements and claims conveyed in this article are the words of those making them, and not the position of ZeroHedge.

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Pollster Mark Mitchell, an adviser to Vice President JD Vance, says Susie Wiles, Trump's former chief of staff, warned him off criticizing Pfizer, which he called her old lobbying firm's "number one client."

Before she ran Donald Trump's 2024 campaign and then his White House, Wiles spent nearly a decade as a managing partner at Ballard Partners, the Florida-founded lobbying firm that has become the top-earning shop in Washington under Trump. Since she left (or was booted) as CoS shortly after midterms, several people in Trump's administrative orbit have accused her of using the job to protect the industries paying her old firm at the expense of the President's health agenda.

The loudest of them has been Calley Means, a former top aide to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, as we reported, told Joe Rogan that Wiles said "I need the sugar industry money." On Sunday Means took the case to CBS's "Face the Nation," telling Margaret Brennan that Ballard Partners "controlled" White House policy and that the firm's rise to the top of the lobbying rankings "did not happen by accident."

Brian Ballard said in a Sunday statement that the firm's interactions with Wiles as chief of staff "have been limited and have been the exception, not the rule," and that no one at Ballard Partners lobbied her or West Wing staff on fruit-flavored vapes or glyphosate. Continental Strategy, where Wiles' daughter Katie is a lobbyist, called Means' claims "inaccurate and baseless."

Mitchell, whom Vice President JD Vance brought to the White House to brief Trump on his slipping support, the Washington Post reported, said on his podcast, The Honest Poll, that he was told to stop tweeting and to stop making "these people angry." The post he says set it off, from Nov. 10, 2025, noted that Pfizer had earned $74 billion in profits since its Covid vaccine was released. Journalist Paul Thacker posted the clip on Tuesday.

White House Responds

"The Trump Administration has never allowed and will never allow outside groups to influence policy decisions," White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster told The Epoch Times, pointing to tax cuts, job growth and a sealed border instead of the claims. A Wiles spokesperson told Axios the accusations were "outrageous, defamatory, and provably false," CBS reported.

Means also told Brennan that Wiles and her deputy James Blair were "relentlessly pushing HHS to find a pathway for fruit-flavored vapes." Blair said Means is "intentionally misrepresenting my role" and that he "didn't promote flavored vaping specifically at all," saying he was tasked with getting the FDA to meet its six-month deadline on nicotine-device applications. Two sources told CBS that Trump himself had tasked Blair with speeding FDA responses and wanted more flavored vapes on the market.

On X, Blair wrote that Means "didn't answer or return my call" and that he had told Means he would consider suing if he were defamed. Means answered with a formal request that Wiles and Blair stop texting and calling him, and said that if there is a factual inaccuracy in what he said, they should send it in writing and he will correct it.

Ballard has been one of Trump's top fundraisers for years, bringing in $50 million for his 2024 campaign according to a source CBS cited, and his firm once employed both Wiles and Pam Bondi. Its ties to the White House have not always been smooth: Ballard was briefly barred from the West Wing in 2025 after the firm's lobbying for a cryptocurrency client angered officials, two Trump advisers told CBS, before he apologized that May. Among the firm's longest-standing clients is RAI Services Company, a Reynolds American subsidiary that has paid it millions of dollars since 2017.

CBS's analysis found Ballard Partners reported more than $88 million in lobbying revenue in 2025, the most any firm has reported since the Lobbying Disclosure Act took effect in 1996, even adjusted for inflation, and more than $98 million through the first three quarters of 2026 - over $186 million since Trump returned to office. Bayer, the glyphosate maker whose Supreme Court case Means says the White House helped, has paid the firm since January 2024. A White House official said Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote the government's brief at the Court's request.

Sen. Ron Wyden's August letters allege that Reynolds American gave $5 million to MAGA Inc. on April 30, that its general counsel complained to Trump over lunch on May 2, that the administration allowed flavored vape sales in retail stores on May 8, and that FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned on May 12 after arguing against it. Makary has now said in a statement to CBS that "Big tobacco exploited their connections to administration and HHS officials to put repeated pressure on me," adding: "The Kratom/7-OH lobby ran the same playbook to undermine my efforts to make this new 'gas station heroin' illegal."

Wiles told CBS she had nothing to do with the tobacco industry's lunch with Trump at his Jupiter, Florida golf club, which Means says she arranged. The New York Times reported that tobacco companies gave at least $20 million to Republicans in 2026.

Wiles' exit, which as we noted put Stephen Miller in her job on Monday, did not end it. Attorney General Todd Blanche dismissed Means as a "disgruntled former administration official," while Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming House Oversight chairman, said he will look into the claims, CBS reported. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Means calls his "hero," has so far stood by Trump and thanked Wiles on X, crediting her with brokering his partnership with the President.

Two sources told CBS that when an administration official derided MAHA supporters as "nuts" in a White House meeting last year, Wiles shot back: "I'm one of those MAHA nuts." Trump's longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio, whom Means accused of helping drug companies, called the claim that he is "in the pocket of Big Pharma" "ridiculous" and "demonstrably false."

Means told Brennan he does not believe Trump fully knew what his advisers were doing, and that "a lot of this happened without Trump's full knowledge." Blair has said he is considering a lawsuit; Means has said Ballard's statement "corrected assertions he did not make." As we reported, independent journalist Nick Monroe has since aired an anonymous source's claim that Wiles banned MAHA activists from White House events.

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