Former Trump administration officials are moving into companies and consulting roles tied to Venezuela’s newly opened oil sector, raising fresh revolving-door questions as U.S. firms race into the market.
The United States helped reshape Venezuela’s political order, opened the country’s oil sector to new investment and created one of the hottest energy markets in the world. Now some of the people who helped shape U.S. Venezuela policy are leaving government and showing up on the business side of the same boom.
The Washington Post reports that several former Trump administration officials have taken jobs or advisory roles with companies pursuing opportunities in Venezuela’s oil industry. The moves are legal on their face, but ethics experts say the speed of the revolving door deserves scrutiny because recent government access and policy knowledge can be extremely valuable in a market being rebuilt under heavy U.S. influence.
One example is Michael Jensen, who had been the top White House official handling Latin America policy. According to The Post, Jensen joined Primavera, an energy company founded by crypto billionaire Fred Ehrsam, shortly after leaving government; the company has since signed agreements with Venezuela’s state oil company.
Another former White House energy adviser, Brittany Kelm, took a vice president role at Sable Offshore, which is pursuing Venezuelan oil opportunities. Other former officials have entered consulting and lobbying roles connected to companies trying to navigate the new energy landscape.
There is no established finding that any of these officials broke ethics laws or improperly steered government policy for future employers. The companies and individuals involved say they are complying with legal and ethical requirements, and private-sector jobs are a normal destination for people leaving government.
The awkward part is the timing. If you spend months helping design the map and then leave government just as private companies start paying people who know every shortcut on that map, the optics are going to attract attention even when nobody has proven misconduct.
Venezuela’s oil sector is enormous and historically underdeveloped because of years of sanctions, mismanagement and political instability. After the U.S.-backed transition this year, American companies and investors began racing to secure contracts, assets and relationships that could be worth billions.
That makes former officials unusually attractive hires. They understand sanctions, regulatory policy, the new Venezuelan political structure and the personalities inside both governments. In Washington, that is called expertise. Outside Washington, people sometimes call it knowing exactly whom to text.
Revolving-door rules are supposed to prevent former officials from immediately lobbying their old agencies on specific matters they handled in government. But those rules can be narrow, and they do not prevent every form of consulting, strategic advice or business development based on knowledge gained in public service.
Ethics experts quoted by The Post say the situation illustrates the limits of those rules. A former official does not need to violate a lobbying ban to become commercially valuable because of relationships, insider understanding and credibility built while taxpayers were paying the salary.
The Venezuela boom creates a particularly sharp version of that problem because the market itself was transformed by U.S. policy. The same government that helped create the opportunity is now producing alumni who can help companies profit from it.
That does not automatically mean corruption. It does mean the public has a legitimate reason to ask where public service ends and private monetization begins, especially when the handoff happens before the government-issued business cards are cold.
For now, the oil rush is moving faster than the ethics debate. The question is whether current disclosure and cooling-off rules are strong enough for a market where yesterday’s policy official can become tomorrow’s highly paid guide to the industry that policy just opened.
