Regulatory Capture, by Appointment
Big Alcohol’s lawyers are inside the agencies that regulate Big Alcohol. A former legal representative of the world’s largest wine company now advises the FDA Commissioner. A former Bacardi lawyer now oversees consumer protection at the FTC. A Brown-Forman insider with live financial stakes in the company now shapes U.S. spirits trade policy. And the President who appointed them owns a large winery.
An analysis of financial disclosures published by ProPublica reveals that former lawyers for some of the world’s largest alcohol corporations now hold senior positions at the U.S. federal agencies responsible for regulating alcohol labelling, advertising, and trade. Without adequate conflict-of-interest protections, officials with direct alcohol industry ties end up regulating the industry they came from.
ProPublica released a trove of disclosure records in the beginning of March 2026. These documents detail the finances of more than 1,500 Trump appointees, including former lobbyists, industry executives and at least a dozen officials who declined to identify former clients. ProPublica reveals a web of financial ties between Trump officials and the industries they are meant to regulate. Movendi International investigated the documents with a specific focus on alcohol industry-ties with the Trump administration.
ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force.
Four Officials, Four Agencies, Four Alcohol Industry Giants
FDA: From Wine Giant’s Legal Team to the Commissioner’s Inner Circle
Kyle Diamantas is Senior Advisor to the Commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Before joining the agency, he worked as a lawyer at Jones Day, where his clients included E. & J. Gallo Winery – the largest wine company in the world by volume. Diamantas’s financial disclosure, published by ProPublica, lists Gallo under compensation received for legal services.
The FDA is the agency tasked with regulating what appears on alcohol labels and which health claims alcohol producers such as E. & J. Gallo Winery can make about their products. At a time when countries such as Ireland have adopted mandatory cancer warning labels on alcohol products, and a growing number of countries and regions are improving guidelines and information about the risks of low-risk alcohol use, the U.S. FDA has one of the world’s largest wine companies’ former lawyer advising its Commissioner – as severe conflict of interest. Any move toward evidence-based health information on alcohol labels would pass through Diamantas’s sphere of influence at the FDA.
FTC: From Defending Bacardi’s Marketing to Policing It
Katherine R. White is Deputy Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Her financial disclosure shows that she previously represented Bacardi & Company as a client at the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren, receiving compensation for legal services.
The Bureau of Consumer Protection is the division of the FTC that polices deceptive and unfair marketing practices – including alcohol advertising.
The alcohol industry spends billions of dollars annually on marketing that systematically targets young people and normalises alcohol use. The person now tasked with protecting consumers from misleading marketing previously worked to protect a major spirits company’s commercial interests – she went from defending Big Alcohol’s marketing strategies to now being tasked with overseeing them.
USTR: A Brown-Forman Insider Shaping Spirits Trade Policy
Samuel A. Scales serves as Senior Advisor at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), earning $399,000 per year. His financial disclosure lists Brown-Forman Corporation – the company behind Jack Daniel’s – under “Roles Outside Government.” Critically, Scales still holds unvested restricted stock units and stock appreciation rights in Brown-Forman, meaning his personal wealth is directly tied to the company’s share price.
The USTR is the agency that negotiates trade agreements and tariffs on spirits – including U.S. American whiskey tariffs that have been at the centre of EU–U.S. trade disputes for years. Scales’s financial interest in Brown-Forman’s market performance is directly affected by the trade policy he now helps shape – a live and massive conflict of interest.
State Department: Budweiser APAC’s Lawyer Overseeing Its Key Markets
Michael G. DeSombre, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, represented Budweiser APAC – the largest beer company in the Asia-Pacific region – as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell. His current portfolio at the State Department covers the very markets where Budweiser APAC operates: China, South Korea, India, and Southeast Asia.
This case is particularly relevant in the context of the global expansion of the alcohol industry into low- and middle-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region, where multinational alcohol corporations, such as AB InBev, are aggressively pursuing market growth as sales plateau in high-income markets. The State Department shapes diplomatic and trade relationships that directly affect market access for these corporations.
A President Who Owns a Large Winery
These appointments take place against a backdrop that compounds the conflict of interest. President Donald Trump personally owns Trump Vineyard Estates – Virginia’s largest vineyard – valued at $6–$30 million across multiple entities. He also holds stock in three of the world’s largest alcohol companies: Constellation Brands, Molson Coors, and Diageo.
As President, Trump sets the policy agenda across every agency that touches alcohol regulation – from FDA labelling to FTC advertising oversight, from TTB taxation to USTR trade negotiations. A president with direct ownership interests in the alcohol industry appoints the officials who regulate it, and several of those officials have their own alcohol industry ties.
The conflicts are systemic.
Alcohol Money Across the Administration
The revolving door cases above are the sharpest examples, but they are far from the only alcohol industry ties. ProPublica’s database reveals at least 17 Trump administration officials with direct employment, compensation, or ownership ties to alcohol businesses – from brewery owners to winery investors to holders of liquor licences.
Beyond them, dozens more hold stock in publicly traded alcohol companies: 28 officials hold Diageo stock, 28 hold LVMH/Moët Hennessy, 22 hold Anheuser-Busch InBev, and 21 hold Brown-Forman.
Even passive stockholdings constitute a conflict of interest when officials hold financial stakes in the industry their agency is tasked to regulate. Across the administration, these financial ties run deep – from the Oval Office to mid-level appointees. The White House, the FDA, the FTC, the USTR, and the Commerce Department all have officials with financial ties to the alcohol industry. The system itself is tilted toward alcohol industry interests and against the people’s health interests. It is a system of the Money versus the Many.
Labelling, advertising, and trade policy all matter for preventing and reducing alcohol harm. These are the specific policy areas where the officials identified in this analysis hold both significant policy power and maintain serious alcohol industry ties.
The financial disclosures analysed here help explain why. When the agencies responsible for labelling, advertising oversight, and trade policy are staffed by officials with direct ties to the companies they regulate, the regulatory environment is structurally tilted toward profit maximisation interests, instead of the public good. It also means the alcohol industry’s influence is embedded in the architecture of governance under the Trump administration.
Effective conflict-of-interest protections, mandatory recusal requirements, and transparency in appointments are essential safeguards. Without them, the revolving door between Big Alcohol and the agencies that should regulate it will continue to undermine public health.
A Governance Crisis and a Political Response
What the ProPublica data makes clear is a system rigged against the public interest. Alcohol industry lawyers move into the agencies that regulate their former clients. A president with direct financial stakes in the alcohol market appoints the officials who oversee it. The agencies charged with protecting the public – on labelling, advertising, trade – are staffed by people whose financial disclosures tell a story of severe and serious conflicts of interest.
Movendi International’s guidelines on Preventing Conflict of Interest in Alcohol Policy Development lay out precisely what is needed to change it. Governments need to formally recognise – in law, in ethics codes, in national alcohol strategies – that the alcohol industry’s profit maximisation interests are fundamentally and irreconcilably incompatible with the people’s interest in public health action on alcohol harms. Public officials need to be required to declare all current and former ties to the alcohol industry. Cooling-off periods of at least two years are needed to prevent alcohol industry lawyers from stepping directly into the agencies that should regulate their former clients. And every interaction between government officials and alcohol industry representatives needs to be documented, transparent, and publicly accessible.
The United States already operates one of the world’s most advanced lobbying disclosure systems. But transparency alone is not sufficient. The officials identified in our analysis were all properly disclosed. Their ties appear in official filings. What is missing is robust conflicts of interest safeguards and enforcement of such so that the money of Big Alcohol cannot steer U.S. alcohol policy in contradiction of the many – the people who want public health action on alcohol harms.
What the United States lacks – and what the world lacks – is a binding global instrument for alcohol equivalent to Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). That provision legally obliges governments to protect tobacco policy from commercial and vested interests. No such obligation exists for alcohol policy. And the case of the Trump administration’s entanglement with Big Alcohol underscores the urgent need. A global alcohol treaty – with a provision that mirrors and builds on FCTC Article 5.3 – would change that. It would give governments the legal framework, the political mandate, and the accountability mechanisms to do what transparency requirements and voluntary conduct codes have failed to deliver: protecting alcohol policy from alcohol industry interference and conflicts of interest and structurally removing Big Alcohol from the rooms where policy is made that would affect their profit maximisation agenda.
Civil society’s role here is structural. Monitoring, documenting, exposing, and ensuring accountability for these conflicts is core to the work.
The findings here should be shared, amplified, and used as the basis for concrete improvements: mandatory recusal from all regulatory matters touching former clients, binding cooling-off periods, and an end to appointments that place industry insiders in charge of the agencies that regulate industries they came from.
Alcohol kills approximately 178,000 people in the United States every year. Alcohol’s death toll rose 29% between 2016 and 2021 alone. Each of those deaths cut a life short by an average of 24 years. Beyond the human toll, the harm caused by alcohol companies costs the U.S. economy at least $249 billion annually in lost workplace productivity, healthcare, criminal justice, and road crashes. ‘That figure is from 2010; the real cost today is certainly higher. Alcohol harm is one of the most devastating and most preventable crises in U.S. American life. But the agencies responsible for preventing and reducing that harm are currently staffed by officials with documented financial and professional ties to the industry causing it. That is a governance crisis that requires a political response – to the public interest back at the center of policy making.
About This Analysis
This analysis is based on financial disclosures published by ProPublica’s Trump Team Financial Disclosures Database, which covers 1,573 appointees and approximately 117,000 reported assets. Disclosures were searched using the names of the 25 largest alcohol companies globally by revenue, the three largest U.S. alcohol distributors, and broad category terms including “alcohol,” “distillery,” “brewery,” “winery,” and “liquor.” The database captures only what is disclosed on official Office of Government Ethics forms; undisclosed interests, lobbying contacts, and informal relationships are not reflected.
