Why K Street is now living in fear of Trump’s retribution campaign
The president’s demand that Microsoft fire former Biden DOJ official Lisa Monaco has put C-suites and lobbying shops on high alert about who they hire. 09/30/2025 06:38 PM EDT1/2
Donald Trump’s attempt to jawbone Microsoft into firing former Biden DOJ official Lisa Monaco as a top D.C. operative has put K Street on high alert about who they hire.
Much of the private sector is paralyzed by Trump’s broader efforts to leverage the might of the government to bend companies to his whims. But that pressure is magnified in government affairs shops across Washington, where corporations are desperate to curry Trump’s favor and avoid his wrath.
“Anything that comes across my desk now is like, ‘What Republican can we hire? And is the Republican MAGA?’” said Jeff Forbes, a founding partner at the lobbying firm Forbes Tate Partners. The job market is so precarious in the Trump era, he added, that it’s been tough for even moderate Republicans to get land a big influence job in Washington, let alone Democrats.
In a town where political connections to whomever is in power amount to currency, it’s not unusual for corporate lobbyists to cycle out of prominent roles when their party loses power.
But “to have a target on your back because of past political affiliation in what has traditionally been a very nonpartisan area is a totally new dynamic,” said one veteran Democratic consultant.
Facebook parent company Meta, for example, has gone all-in on Republicans, elevating the company’s longtime emissary to the right, Joel Kaplan, to head up its policy operations. Meta also added longtime Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board, and teamed up with conservative anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck to root out ideological “bias” from its AI infrastructure.
To some tech industry watchers, there were signs from the start that Microsoft was aware of how hiring Monaco might play in the current climate.
Monaco, who served as Biden’s deputy attorney general and oversaw the department’s various inquiries into Trump’s alleged election interference and mishandling of classified documents, was announced this summer as Microsoft’s president of global affairs.
The company announced her arrival in tandem with the news of a promotion for one of the company’s most prominent Trump alums, former Trump trade official CJ Mahoney. One Silicon Valley player, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive conversations, suggested that the move from Microsoft signaled “they probably knew there was some risk there.”
Months earlier, Monaco was among more than a dozen Democratic figures who had their security clearances revoked by Trump. Then last Friday, the president went even further.
“It is my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of Lisa Monaco,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, calling it “unacceptable” that Monaco might have access to “highly sensitive information” as part of her role, “especially given the major contracts that Microsoft has with the United States Government.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/30/microsoft-monaco-kstreet-trump-00589058