In the final 76 days of the Biden administration, the Department of Energy’s Loans Programs Office issued roughly $100 billion in loans after approving only $40 billion over the prior 15 years . But the real story isn’t just the unprecedented spending velocity—it’s where the money went and who ended up benefiting.

Following Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024 debate with now-President Donald Trump, senior Biden officials landed roles at organizations that received agency funding . In some cases, money was steered to NGOs that the officials worked for before joining the government - where they then returned following the cash bonanza .

Using data from USASpending.gov, Democracy Restored found that federal agencies had obligated more than $600 million in taxpayer money to these organizations since July 1, 2024 . The obligations began to drop the day after the election. Obligations to these same organizations since Nov. 5, 2024 fell to $246 million .

The Revolving Green Door

The pattern emerged across multiple agencies, with senior federal officials moving into roles at organizations that received agency funding — or having previously worked for them before holding key government posts .

Jigar Shah, who was director of the Loans Programs Office within the DOE, is now a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute. Jennifer Wilcox, who held the position of principal deputy assistant secretary at the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the Department of Energy, is also a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute . The Department of Energy awarded the World Resources Institute a $1 million grant in August 2024 .

Renee Stone, formerly in senior leadership roles at NOAA, now serves as vice president of climate for the Audubon Society. During the Biden administration, Audubon received nearly $4 million across three grants for habitat restoration projects .

Monica Medina, another former NOAA official, is now a distinguished fellow at Conservation International, which received a $9 million grant in 2023 for an ecosystem restoration project in Hawaii .

Chetan Hebbale, once a policy adviser in the White House, later joined the Nature Conservancy as a climate and conservation finance policy adviser. The organization received more than $6 million in federal funding during Biden’s term .

Ethics Oversight in Collapse

While this revolving door churned, federal ethics oversight systems were breaking down. A December 2024 audit of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office—which handles more than $385 billion in loan authority —revealed systematic failures.

The Office of Inspector General’s audit reviewed 40 employees of the office’s 219 full-time staff, and found that 20% of those reviewed had a potential conflict of interest or the appearance of a loss of impartiality in performing their duties .

One senior-level employee did not disclose a prior position at a large financial investment company for which this person still held millions of dollars in stock . While working for the LPO, the employee communicated and participated in matters with this investment firm, including the loan approval process. The employee, the OIG report states, should have been recused from working on the matter .

An Office of Inspector General audit released in December found that 20% of Loans Programs Office employees reviewed had a potential conflict of interest - or the appearance of impaired impartiality - while performing their duties .

The Human Cost: When Connected Companies Come First

The implications extend far beyond Washington ethics violations. As our investigation found, these conflicts create real-world consequences for communities that depend on federal services and programs.

In September 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services awarded Maximus a nine-year, $6.6 billion contract to run the Contact Center Operations for 1-800-Medicare. In the contract announcement, CMS lauded Maximus for supporting the contact center for 10 years at that point and stated the company “will continue to deliver high quality customer service for the people served by our programs.” Maximus employees have handled more than 40 million inquiries a year and serve as the public face of the program when people need help or assistance .

Yet despite Maximus meeting every objective and metric, CMS decided not to renew the options on the contract beyond the current one , apparently due to union pressure rather than performance issues—a decision that could disrupt critical healthcare services for millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

The Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, designed to help disadvantaged businesses, has become another avenue for abuse. “The SBA’s 8(a) program is the largest set-aside program at the agency, which dished out $40+ billion in contract awards during fiscal year 2024 (FY 24) alone,” according to Senator Joni Ernst. The Biden administration tripled the initiative’s contracting goals , but “decades of Government Accountability Office (GAO), SBA’s Office of Inspector General, and DOJ probes expose the same rot. Sloppy oversight and weak enforcement measures allow 8(a) participants to act as pass-through entities, snagging unlimited no-bid deals with little transparency” .

Environmental Contracts: A Case Study in Captured Regulation

The environmental contracting space shows how political connections can undermine scientific integrity. The House Science Committee found evidence of conflicts of interest at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), inappropriate attempts to influence the development of the proposed rule, and a pattern of misleading Members of Congress on the specifics of the rulemaking process. CEQ worked closely with the CDP to inappropriately influence the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council to write federal acquisition regulations to unfairly benefit favored environmental activist groups .

“There were significant conflicts of interest where White House staff were advocating for regulations that would benefit their friends and former employers” , noted House Science Committee Chairman Frank Lucas.

The case of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm illustrates how high-level conflicts can persist despite ethics agreements. Granholm holds stock options worth up to $5 million in Proterra, a company dubbed “the Tesla of electric buses” that stands to reap significant financial benefits from Biden administration initiatives, some of which Granholm herself leads . While Granholm held stock options in Proterra, President Biden took a well-publicized virtual tour of the company’s plant. The President’s promotion of Proterra could affect the value of the privately held firm looking to go public, and the value of Granholm’s shares along with it .

The Congressional Response

Republican investigators have been tracking these patterns. “Despite concerns with the 8(a) program, Joe Biden opened the floodgates to fraud,” Ernst told Fox News Digital about the program. “I have found evidence of alarming, potentially fraudulent 8(a) awards made across government that need to be investigated. The program must be halted at every agency while a thorough review is conducted to ensure taxpayers are not being ripped off by con artists” .

The Energy Department’s Inspector General has taken the unprecedented step of calling for a suspension of the loan program. “Although the audit is not complete, we are issuing this memorandum now because of the risks associated with closing an additional $22 billion in loans and loan guarantees by January 20, 2025, without ensuring compliance with conflicts of interest regulations,” the watchdog said.

The investigation reveals that while federal ethics laws exist, they have significant loopholes. Federal ethics law restricts certain post-government actions by former senior officials, but it does not prohibit them from accepting employment with private or nonprofit organizations — even those that received government funding .

While complicated Federal law prohibits certain acts by former employees (including current employees who formerly served in “senior” or “very senior” employee positions) which involve, or may appear to involve, the unfair use of prior Government employment, none of the restrictions of that law prohibits any former employee, regardless of government rank or position, from accepting employment with any particular private or public employer .

This creates what ethics experts call a “shadow lobbying” problem, where former officials influence policy without registering as lobbyists. Unlike past presidents’ ethics pledges, Biden’s plan looks to crack down on “shadow lobbying” where former government officials influence policy but don’t register as lobbyists. The executive order prevents ex-officials from communicating with administration officials for two years after leaving government . But enforcement has proven weak.

The Scale of the Problem

People who have been through the Revolving Door whose current or former place of employment is the Joe Biden administration: 143 , according to OpenSecrets data. This represents a significant increase over previous administrations.

Out of an analysis of 30 top appointed acquisitions positions within the Trump Administration, 15 officials (50%) had a history of traveling through the revolving door, meaning that they had entered the position from the private sector, returned to the private sector following public service, or both. Of these, 11 people came from industry to the public sector, 12 went into the private sector following their public positions, and 8 did both . But the Biden administration’s patterns show an acceleration of this trend, particularly in climate-related contracting.

What Happens Next

The incoming Trump administration has already signaled its intention to review and potentially reverse many of these expenditures. The Department of Energy recently announced it’s eliminating more than $83 billion in what it called “Green New Scam” loans and conditional commitments made through the Loans Programs Office during the Biden administration .

“In its final days, the Biden Administration has been shoveling taxpayer money out the door with insufficient safeguards against fraud, waste, and abuse,” Barrasso said. “Secretary of Energy Granholm should immediately stop the entire loan process until the Department puts strict safeguards in place to protect American taxpayers” .

But the damage to public trust may already be done. “I think the money being shoveled out after President Biden’s debate and the apparent revolving door of appointees going to recipients of these federal funds raises many questions about the timing of the money, the impact of special interests in the Biden administration and the general ethics surrounding this behavior,” said Houston Keene of Democracy Restored.

Beyond the Numbers: Systemic Capture

This investigation reveals more than isolated ethics violations—it exposes systematic capture of the federal contracting apparatus by a network of interconnected organizations, consultants, and officials who rotate between government service and private benefit.

This has created a system where there is significant personal financial motivation for current and former public officials to act in the interest of private entities. This dynamic inherently befuddles these actors’ apparent, and actual, commitment to centering the public in this work, leading to consistently bad outcomes and a general apathy regarding reform .

The pattern extends across agencies and programs, from the Department of Energy’s loan programs to the Small Business Administration’s contracting set-asides to the Department of Transportation’s infrastructure spending. In each case, the same dynamics appear: officials with industry connections making decisions that benefit their former or future employers, weak oversight systems that fail to catch conflicts of interest, and a revolving door that ensures the cycle continues.

The Biden administration came to power promising to restore ethics and competence to government. Instead, it supercharged a system of legalized corruption that has diverted billions in taxpayer funds from their intended purposes to benefit the politically connected. The cost isn’t just financial—it’s the erosion of public trust in democratic institutions and the subversion of programs designed to serve the public interest.

As the Trump administration takes over, it inherits not just these problematic contracts and commitments, but a damaged system that will require fundamental reform to restore integrity to federal contracting. The question is whether the political will exists to take on the entrenched networks that have captured so much of the federal apparatus—or whether the revolving door will simply keep spinning, with new beneficiaries but the same systematic problems.

By The Wire & Dispatch DeepSeam Team

Rebecca Crane contributed regulatory analysis, Marcus Delgado provided financial investigation, Nadia Osei examined human impact, and Priya Sharma covered environmental implications. James Whitfield served as lead investigative coordinator.