Democrats are zeroing in on the Pentagon and defense contractors as they prepare to scrutinize potential conflicts of interest in the Trump administration should they win control of Congress, according to lawmakers and people familiar with the plans.
Companies that have contracts with the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are particularly vulnerable, according to several of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. That’s partly because Congress expects the administration will continue to ignore or slow-walk their requests for information — as it has even when Republicans were in control.
Instead, they will “target the other side of the ledger — the companies doing business with the administration or that are close to the administration,” said David Weinberg, the former Democratic staff director for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who recently joined the advisory firm Invariant.
Companies that have received investments from 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm that counts Donald Trump Jr. as a partner, as well as those in which the federal government has taken equity stakes, will likely especially be in Congress’s crosshairs, people familiar with the matter said.
That overlap was thrust into the spotlight this week when President Donald Trump announced the US government would take a stake in a new shipyard in Baltimore where Anduril Industries announced a $3.7 billion investment. 1789 is an investor in Anduril, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, has joined an effort calling for an investigation into billions of dollars in contracts awarded to defense companies linked to the investment firm.
In response, the firms that line DC’s K Street lobbyist strip are preparing for what could be a far less hospitable climate on Capitol Hill, according to lobbying disclosures and other people familiar with the matter. They are hiring dozens of new staffers — many of them Democratic former congressional aides — and creating new practice areas, as well as expanding existing ones.
Palantir Technologies Inc. has hired Ferox Strategies and Avoq. Vulcan Elements Inc., which manufactures rare earth magnets and is backed by 1789, has hired the law firms Squire Patton Boggs and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, as well as Invariant.
Neither Palantir nor Anduril officials responded to requests for comment.
Invariant has also taken on Aeolus Labs, the Defense Industrial Base Capital Fund and the Advanced Manufacturing Company of America — nearly all in the last six months.
Squire Patton Boggs has hired at least two dozen new staffers, including the former lead Democratic investigator for the House oversight committee, and the former staff director for the House committee on artificial intelligence and digital assets, spokesman Angelo Kakolyris said.
Invariant has stood up a new oversight practice, redirecting a number of communications and government relations staffers to spend a majority of their time on potential Democratic probes, and hired the former staff director for the Senate government affairs committee, Weinberg said.
Democrats are heavily favored to win a majority in at least the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
While likely unable to pass much legislation Trump wouldn’t veto, Democrats are planning to use their newfound powers to investigate the Trump family’s business dealings, defense contracts and foreign gifts, as well as his physical changes to Washington’s monuments and alleged malfeasance in contracting.
“We need to pick out those signature cases of corruption and have real accountability over this administration,” Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and member of the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview. “I’m figuring out those signature cases and the things we need to hold Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense accountable on.”
House Democrats have already demanded documents from Vulcan, the rare-earth magnet maker that’s received backing from 1789 Capital and a $620 million conditional loan commitment from the Pentagon.
AJ Merton, a lawyer for 1789 Capital, told Bloomberg that Trump Jr.’s company “has no intention of being drawn into political gamesmanship, particularly when American companies, American workers and strategically important American industries are targets.”
One of Vulcan’s lawyers is Akin’s Marcus Childress, who last worked for Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary panel who wants to investigate 1789. Raskin led one of the impeachment investigations against Trump in his first term. Akin announced his hiring in March, noting he was a partner and co-head of the congressional investigations practice.
Vulcan said it was working to “solve an existential threat to the United States and our allies,” and would “continue to engage with Congress on a bipartisan basis in support of that mission, just as we have since 2024.”
The companies are not only interested in surviving a congressional probe unscathed but also survive what are expected to be cuts in defense appropriations under a Democratic Congress.
The defense industry “is preparing their arguments as to why continued robust defense spending is essential to our readiness and the industrial base,” said Mike Herson, president of American Defense International, a top defense lobby shop. ADI represents SpaceX as well as RTX Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. among others.
Squire Patton Boggs’s two dozen new hires for its national security, government and policy practice came in the last 18 months. Giancarlo Pellegrini, more recently hired to lead the firm’s congressional investigations practice, was the lead Democratic investigator for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“Federal financing, whether it’s equity infusions or loans or grants, all the different forms that it has taken, I think that’s a topic of interest to an incoming Democratic majority,” Pellegrini said.
He added that if investigators find a connection to a Trump family business or an administration official’s personal finances, “that’s probably what starts to take something higher up the list in terms of priority.”
Anduril and Palantir have seen their fortunes rise in the last two years and are expected to face particularly tough questions from senators like Warren. She has raised concerns about the two firms’ ties to the administration, singling out Army Under Secretary Michael Obadal, who previously was a senior director at Anduril.
“We are facing a bit of a perfect storm for really supercharged congressional oversight next Congress,” Weinberg said.
Palantir, co-founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel, has ramped up its K Street hires this year to add some Democratic firepower. Ferox Strategies counts among its Palantir lobbyists former Democratic Steering Committee staffers and Debra Dixon, a former chief of staff to former Biden administration cabinet official Xavier Becerra when he was a member of Congress, according to lobbying disclosure forms.
Avoq counts among its lobbyists former staffers to Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Democratic fundraiser Steve Elmendorf is among those working on the account, along with Cedric Grant, Jeffries’ former chief of staff. So are Keith Castaldo, a former longtime aide to Gillibrand, and Joseph Orlando, a former Democratic aide on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, according to 2026 lobbying disclosure forms.
Avoq began lobbying for Palantir in June on issues related to “government programs supported by commercial technology,” according to disclosure filings.
Clients in the defense sector need people with substantive expertise in the Pentagon, as well as someone “to help them understand how to navigate the mechanics and the tactics of an investigation,” Pellegrini said. “They also need our public policy folks who understand the unwritten rules and the law of the jungle that is Capitol Hill sometimes.”