Revolving Door · Access Ledger

When the door spins, who passes through

Heirs Ledger tracks wealth transferred by birth. Dark Money tracks influence transferred by donation. This page tracks access transferred by employment — documented role moves where senior officials cycled between government, industry, and advocacy organizations. Featured cases below carry mechanism notes and (where applicable) statutory-violation flags.

25transitions
9in
16out
4statutory flags

Featured transitions 11 curated

High-mechanism cases: the move's significance is in the operator note. Statutory-violation flags identify documented apparent breaches of post-employment restrictions (cooling-off periods, recusal commitments, representational bars).

The door, mapped

Every documented transition in the ledger, aggregated agency-by-agency. Ribbons flow through the door: lime leaves government for industry, crimson comes back in. Width is proportional to the count on file — densest where our ledger is densest, not necessarily where the world's volume is highest.

Flow table (all 12 aggregated routes)
Other Agency 9 Industry (misc) Mark Esper, Chris Brose, Trae Stephens
Other Agency 3 Think Tank / Advocacy Robert Lighthizer, Larry Kudlow, John Bolton
Other Agency 2 PE / Hedge Fund Steven Mnuchin, Ajit Pai
Industry (misc) 2 White House Brian Deese, Anita Dunn
Think Tank / Advocacy 2 White House Jared Bernstein, Heather Boushey
OMB 1 Think Tank / Advocacy Russell Vought
Industry (misc) 1 State Dept Antony Blinken
OMB 1 Industry (misc) Peter Orszag
PE / Hedge Fund 1 White House Stephen Miran
Industry (misc) 1 DOJ Lisa Monaco
Industry (misc) 1 Treasury Wally Adeyemo
Think Tank / Advocacy 1 SEC Hester Peirce

All transitions 14 additional

Chronological — most recent first. Every row carries at least one primary-source URL; many carry a corroborating second source.

GOV → INDUSTRY 12GOV → ADVOCACY 4INDUSTRY → GOV 6ADVOCACY → GOV 3
INDUSTRY → GOV PRIMARY 2025-03-13 → present

Stephen Miran

Hudson Bay Capital Management Senior Strategist → The White House Chair, Council of Economic Advisers
Why this move matters

Miran went from running macro-strategy at a multi-strategy hedge fund to chairing the Council of Economic Advisers — the body that produces the administration's Economic Report of the President. Confirmation-disclosure required separation from Hudson Bay positions.

INDUSTRY → GOV PRIMARY 2021-04-21 → 2025-01-20

Lisa Monaco

Apollo Global Management Senior Counsel → U.S. Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General
Why this move matters

Monaco's path was DOJ (under Obama) → Apollo Senior Counsel → back to DOJ as the second-most-senior official under Biden. Apollo was under SEC scrutiny in the relevant window over Leon Black's Epstein-era payments; Monaco's role as Senior Counsel placed her in the relevant compliance leadership cohort.

GOV → ADVOCACY PRIMARY 2021-04-01 → present

Robert Lighthizer

(prior employer not on file) U.S. Trade Representative → America First Policy Institute Chair, Center for American Trade
Why this move matters

Lighthizer's AFPI role functioned as the policy holding-pattern between his first-term USTR tenure and the Trump-II trade-policy ecosystem. AFPI publicly described itself as a personnel and policy pipeline for a returning Trump administration.

GOV → ADVOCACY PRIMARY 2021-03-15 → present

Larry Kudlow

(prior employer not on file) Director, National Economic Council → Fox Business Network Host, 'Kudlow'
Why this move matters

Kudlow had been a Fox Business + CNBC commentator from 2007-2018 before joining the NEC. His return to Fox Business <2 months after departing the White House is the cleanest documented round-trip between cable-financial-news commentary and senior White House economic policy.

GOV → ADVOCACY PRIMARY 2020-01-15 → present

John Bolton

(prior employer not on file) National Security Advisor → American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow
Why this move matters

Bolton was a long-time AEI senior fellow before joining the Trump administration; the post-administration return was a re-instatement rather than a fresh hire — the canonical 'institutional holding pattern' pattern for senior Republican foreign-policy alumni.

GOV → INDUSTRY PRIMARY 2018-03-28 → 2021-01-20

Susan Rice

(prior employer not on file) National Security Advisor → Netflix, Inc. Board of Directors
Why this move matters

Rice joined Netflix's board approximately 14 months after leaving as National Security Advisor. She resigned the seat upon nomination to direct the Domestic Policy Council under Biden — the round-trip pattern (gov → board → gov) being the structurally interesting feature.

GOV → INDUSTRY SECONDARY 2017-01-21 → 2020-11-30

Avril Haines

(prior employer not on file) Deputy National Security Advisor → Palantir Technologies Consultant
Why this move matters

Haines consulted for Palantir between her CIA Deputy Director role and her appointment as DNI. Palantir holds substantial contracts with the agencies under DNI oversight (CIA, NGA, FBI). The Intercept's reporting first surfaced the consulting relationship.

GOV → INDUSTRY PRIMARY 2014-09-02 → 2017-01-31

David Plouffe

(prior employer not on file) Senior Advisor to the President → Uber Technologies, Inc. Senior Vice President, Policy and Strategy
Why this move matters

Plouffe explicitly leveraged his Obama-network in Uber's regulatory fights at the municipal level (notably the 2015 NYC cap battle vs. Mayor de Blasio). The hire was the case study that introduced 'gig-economy revolving door' as a category in trade press.

GOV → INDUSTRY PRIMARY 2009-04-01 → present

Stephen Hadley

(prior employer not on file) National Security Advisor → Rice Hadley Gates LLC Co-founder & Principal
Why this move matters

Hadley co-founded Rice Hadley Gates LLC with Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates three months after leaving the Bush administration. The firm advises corporations on geopolitical and political risk — the most direct possible monetization of senior NSC tenure.

How this is built

  • Sources — every row cites at least one primary source: an SEC 8-K board-seat disclosure, an agency press release, a Federal Register ethics waiver, a court filing, or a senate.gov confirmation record. Secondary corroboration (journalism) is recorded where it exists.
  • Confidence tiers — primary = the move is directly named in a primary-source document. secondary = the move is reported by a reputable journalism outlet and not contradicted in primary sources. inferential = pattern-based (e.g. ethics-waiver implies a transition we haven't directly confirmed) and reviewable.
  • Statutory flags (the ⚠ badge) — pre-computed apparent violations of post-employment restrictions: 18 U.S.C. §207(c) cooling-off periods, agency-specific representational bars, executive-order recusal commitments. Each flag carries its own evidence source.
  • Featured rows — operator-curated; the case has a documented mechanism that makes it a teaching example, not just a job move.
  • Cross-references — when a Revolving Door destination organization also appears in Dark Money flows or Heirs Ledger, the entity dossier surfaces all three. The platform's three ledgers are designed to compose.

A role transition by itself is not malfeasance. Most moves don't violate any rule. What's worth investigating is the pattern: who hires whom, when, with what statutory restrictions in play, and with what subsequent benefit to the destination organization. This page documents the moves; the inference is the reader's.