This Dark Money Political Operative Could Soon Become Trump’s Ethics Chief
Michael Chamberlain sought to block an ethics inquiry into a conflicted Interior Department official and pushed to roll back endangered species protections.
The man President Donald Trump tapped to serve as the government’s top ethics official has for years painted himself a nonpartisan watchdog — someone committed to holding government officials accountable, regardless of party.
But a review of tax documents and public records by Public Domain shows that his organization is a creature of the conservative movement, funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from right-wing dark money groups and tied to a constellation of MAGA influencers and media mouthpieces. In recent months, in a sign of loyalty to the White House, he even intervened to try to block a federal ethics probe into an influential Trump political appointee.
Michael Chamberlain, who served as a communications official in the first Trump administration, founded Protect the Public’s Trust in early 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office. For the next four years, Chamberlain and his organization became a thorn in the Biden administration’s side, filing a frenzy of public records requests, ethics complaints and lawsuits targeting high-ranking officials. When Trump reentered office last year, Protect the Public’s Trust suddenly pivoted — it overlooked or defended the myriad conflicts of interest within the Trump team and continued to focus its attention on the previous administration and other Democrats who no longer control the government.
Chamberlain’s evident fealty to Trump and MAGA Republicans appears to have paid off. Last month, Trump nominated Chamberlain to serve as director of the Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency responsible for preventing conflicts of interest and ethical violations within the executive branch. Chamberlain does not have a law degree, as is the norm for OGE directors.
Chamberlain did not respond to Public Domain’s requests for comment.
Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, sees Chamberlain as a “highly partisan” nominee.
“He started up this organization basically to go after ethical problems with Democrats,” Painter said. “I think the significant part of what he said about Biden, it was exaggerated, but there was some truth to it too: there were serious problems with ethics during the Biden administration. Trump is worse and we all know that … and [Chamberlain] said nothing critical of Trump.”
“It’s just one more highly partisan organization that says they’re focusing on ethics.”
For a sense of how Chamberlain might run this key oversight agency, consider his actions after Public Domain revealed last year that Matt Giacona, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, had used his government position to work on the same policy issues that he had previously advocated for as a long-time offshore oil lobbyist on Capitol Hill. The story sparked a letter from Congressional Democrats urging the Interior Department’s inspector general to open an ethics investigation into Giacona’s conduct.
Chamberlain quickly intervened to defend the Trump appointee. In an October 2025 letter to the Interior Department’s inspector general, Chamberlain ran interference for Giacona’s benefit, discouraging the agency’s top watchdog from launching the ethics investigation.
“Regardless of whether the [Democratic] authors lacked sufficient understanding of the ethics rules or intentionally seek to misdirect the OIG into a baseless partisan investigation, we do hope this letter leaves the Office with the confidence that its resources are better spent elsewhere,” Chamberlain wrote. It remains unclear whether the Inspector General’s office moved forward with a probe into Giacona.
Despite presenting itself as defender of transparency, Protect the Public’s Trust initially misrepresented itself online and in public records requests. As Public Domain co-founder Chris D’Angelo reported for HuffPost in 2023, the group repeatedly described itself as a “501(c)(3) non-profit organization” without having filed the IRS form that is required of 501(c)(3) nonprofits during the first couple years of its operation. In their coverage of PPT’s public records and legal efforts, right-wing media often adopted the group’s “nonprofit” label.
The IRS granted PPT its 501(c)(3) status in May 2023 and a handful of Protect The Public’s Trust tax documents have since been made available to the public. They show that Chamberlain’s group, whose organization goes by Government Oversight and Education Inc on official tax forms, has taken more than $500,000 from Donors Trust, the vast bulk of Protect the Public Trust’s funding in 2023 and 2024 and much of it used to pay Chamberlain’s salary. Donors Trust is a dark-money donor advised fund that shields the identities of its funders, but has been linked to the conservative Koch brothers, the Devos Family and other right-wing billionaires and millionaires.
Chamberlain’s organization also has ties to a well-funded network of conservative media operatives that amplify the MAGA agenda on social media and via a constellation of right-wing news outlets. His organization’s treasurer, Chris Marston, is a well-known Republican political consultant who serves as General Counsel for the Republican Party of Virginia. Marston is also the treasurer for a group called the Institute for Citizen Focused Services, a shadowy organization with a $4 million budget that is led by Hubbel Relat and Doug Domenech. Relat and Domenech are both former Interior Department officials under Trump and allies of David Bernhardt, the powerful MAGA-aligned corporate lobbyist who served as the Interior Secretary during Trump’s first term.
The Institute for Citizen Focused Services funds right-wing media operatives, and in recent years has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to conservative influencers and journalists, including reporter Allum Bohkari and influencer Mike Benz.
The Institute has in turn received more than a million dollars in funding from the Informing America Foundation (IAF), another shadowy organization closely tied to John Solomon, a MAGA-aligned journalist turned White House operative who recently made headlines for his involvement in shaping Trump’s national address accusing China of election interference in the United States. Solomon oversees a constellation of right-leaning media platforms that include Just The News and his own podcast, John Solomon Reports.
Just The News, which receives funding from IAF, consistently amplifies the work of Protect the Public’s Trust. Chamberlain also frequently appears on Solomon’s podcast. With their myriad overlapping ties, organizations like Protect The Public’s Trust, the Institute for Citizen Focused Services, the Informing America Foundation, Just The News and other Solomon-linked entities appear to constitute an “ecosystem of right-wing news,” as Mother Jones described it in a 2025 article.
Marston, Bernhardt, Solomon and the Institute for Citizen Focused Services did not respond to requests for comment.
In recent months, Chamberlain has used his organization to support the Trump administration’s pro-oil agenda. In May, his group sent a letter to the Commerce Department and the National Marine Fisheries Service challenging environmental protections for the Rice’s whale, a critically endangered animal whose listing under the Endangered Species Act has proven inconvenient for oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Trump administration has used a variety of aggressive regulatory maneuvers to undermine protections for the species, and Chamberlain’s group in turn has challenged the scientific findings underpinning the whale’s ESA listing. Policy related to the Rice’s whale, incidentally, is one of the issues that BOEM’s Matt Giacona worked on both as a government official and offshore oil lobbyist, and which sparked ethics concerns about his conduct. After Protect The Public’s Trust intervened to challenge the Rice’s whale ESA listing, John Solomon’s Just The News wrote an article amplifying the group’s efforts.
Painter, the Bush-era ethics lawyer, said he sees Protect the Public’s Trust as part of a bigger problem and pattern of so-called nonpartisan watchdogs forming and then embracing a partisan agenda.
“I would like to see more who are willing to speak out about ethics violations from both Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “I don’t see a lot of that.”
Ticks all the trumpian boxes then