Ripple lobbyist caused immense seething at the White House

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/08/ballard-trump-wiles-lobbyist-00333953

On a Sunday morning in early March, President Donald Trump greenlit a Truth Social post promoting a “Crypto Strategic Reserve.” Hours later, he felt like he’d been played.

That weekend at Mar-a-Lago, an employee of the lobby shop run by Brian Ballard who was attending a donor event at the resort, had personally buttonholed the president and encouraged him multiple times to tout his desire to promote the industry. She even gave him a copy of a message she thought he should write.

It was only after he posted that missive that Trump realized a company behind one of the tokens named in the post, Ripple Labs, was a Ballard client. He was furious and felt like he’d been used, according to two people familiar with the incident who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“He is not welcome in anything anymore,” the president told associates at the White House that month, the people said, referring to Ballard.

Ballard has been persona non grata in the West Wing ever since.

. . .

“He’d been brushing her off — then she kept bothering him and then he finally just gave it to a staffer to put out,” said one of the people familiar with what happened.

Within minutes of the president’s posting, a furious David Sacks — the White House “crypto czar” — called Wiles to complain, according to three people familiar with what occurred. The White House was hosting a crypto summit in Washington the following week, and it looked bad that the president was singling out some companies for praise but not others.

Wiles, who hadn’t been with the president that morning, started working the phones trying to find out what happened. Soon White House officials realized that one of the clients in the Truth Social post was Ballard’s — and that the tweet hadn’t even mentioned Trump’s own budding crypto company.

Trump would later follow up on the message in a second Truth Social post, adding the names of other crypto companies. But by then, it was too late — and Trump was furious.

Trump’s aides were incensed, too, accusing Ballard of assigning his employee to get Trump to hawk his client. One of them, a top aide to the president, called and yelled at Ballard.