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The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at .
Each day of his second term, President Trump reminds all of us that he believes he is above the law. He wastes no time hiding obviously corrupt activity in the shadows, creating a perverse innovation by accepting blatant payoffs out in the public eye, which the media hesitates to criticize. Tomes will be written about the Trump family’s eye-popping level of corrupt activity and their material impact on everyday people, which the Revolving Door Project is tracking in our weekly Corruption Calendar.
But other D.C. insiders who will continue to pursue venal interests in a more traditional manner must also be scrutinized. A prime example of such an insider is former House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry.
The bow-tied 20-year veteran of the House and onetime interim Speaker left office in January and immediately began taking positions with the firms he had been tasked with helping regulate. In the ensuing months, he has racked up no fewer than six jobs with cryptocurrency firms and financial businesses.
After voting against early efforts to bail out Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis, McHenry turned himself into the financial industry’s man in Washington. McHenry was the chair of the Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs back in 2011, where he got into fights with the financial industry’s rising adversary—a then-professor by the name of Elizabeth Warren—accusing her of lying during congressional testimony. McHenry led the Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee from 2019 through 2023, and chaired the committee from 2023 until this January. From that post, he led efforts to combat ESG investing practices—that is, investment practices that take climate change into consideration—and was among the first in Congress to fully embrace the nascent cryptocurrency industry.
While McHenry is a dedicated Republican partisan, he drew the line at actions that could harm financial markets, further ingratiating himself with big business. When some House Republicans were willing to breach the debt limit or shut down the government to achieve their goals, McHenry stepped in to find a compromise. When some Republicans decried the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, McHenry eagerly defended the necessity of the actions.
In short, McHenry spent his time in Congress looking out for his backers in the financial industry. That’s why, when chosen to serve as interim Speaker of the House, he was described as the “No. 1 draft pick for Wall Street.” Unlike his extremely conservative colleagues, McHenry’s intense partisanship ended where Wall Street’s profits began. To this end, McHenry established good working relationships with his Democratic colleagues, further setting himself up as the ideal lobbying prospect after leaving the Hill.
Though barred from official lobbying until January 2026 (members of the House have a one-year cooling-off period before they’re allowed to become registered lobbyists), McHenry has already been selling his influence across the industries he helped regulate.
On February 6th, fintech firm Stripe announced McHenry’s appointment as a “Senior Advisor.” Just three weeks later, he joined Andreesen Horowitz, which heavily invests in multiple crypto projects, also as a “Senior Advisor.” Two days after that, he added another job to the growing pile: vice chairman of crypto firm Ondo Finance. And that was just the start. On March 4th, he took yet another “Senior Advisor” position at “buy now, pay later” fintech firm equipifi. He then turned to more traditional Wall Street firms, becoming a “Senior Advisor” at asset management firm Lazard on April 18th. And on April 29th, he announced his latest role: member of the advisory board at the prominent lobbying firm BGR Group. In addition to all of these positions, McHenry appears on the leadership web page of his former donor, hedge fund Millennium Management, though without a title. Perhaps his position there will be announced soon.
There is little doubt that McHenry will begin working as a lobbyist at the end of his cooling-off period, but this many “jobs” call that definition into question.. His six confirmed positions since the beginning of January make him perhaps the most in-demand influence-peddler in Washington. It sure is a lot of advice for one man to be dispensing.
He’s already predicted that this would be “a wicked hot summer of legislation for crypto,” something that undoubtedly excites his new paymasters. He’s likely going to help shape the latest Republican attempt to provide a weak oversight regime for the crypto industry, one of his pet projects as ranking member and chair of the House Financial Services Committee. But now, the mission to prioritize industry interests over consumer protections will come with six big fat checks.
McHenry is the archetypal traveler through the revolving door. His business-friendly policies not only guaranteed him lavish campaign contributions, but also ensured that upon leaving Congress he could become fantastically wealthy. Rather than representing his constituents, McHenry’s time in office was spent bending over backwards to enrich his friends in finance, and through that, himself. While Congress is theoretically restrained by mandatory cooling-off periods, McHenry has displayed the hollowness of these rules. Industry isn’t leaping to hire McHenry for his business acumen—he hasn’t been in any kind of private industry for more than 20 years, as he was first elected in 2004. He’s being hired first to help enact their legislative agenda, and second as a fat payback for his generous help in office. Registered lobbyist or not, that is what is happening.
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