FIRST IN PI — BLACKBURN’S CHIEF HEADS DOWNTOWN: Mehlman Consulting has hired a top aide to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the chair of two key subcommittees with jurisdiction over tech issues and one of the architects of last year’s kids online safety bill. Jon Adame is joining the firm after spending the past seven years in Blackburn’s office, including serving as her chief of staff since 2023. — Adame said in an interview that he first met Bruce Mehlman, the firm’s founder, while working on a Blackburn-led tech task force under the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that there are “a lot of synergies” in the tech policy work he’d been doing on the Hill and the work Mehlman does for its clients. — The firm represents organizations like Adobe, IBM, Texas Instruments, the Information Technology Industry Council, Netflix, the Semiconductor Technology Leadership Council and the Technology CEO Council. Blackburn is now the chair of Senate Judiciary’s Privacy, Technology and Law Subcommittee as well as the Senate Commerce Consumer Protection, Technology and Data Privacy Subcommittee. In a statement provided by the firm, Blackburn called Adame an “invaluable” adviser and lauded his “deep policy expertise and sharp political acumen.” — In addition to tech issues, Adame told PI he expects to do some trade lobbying. “Since we've come to the Senate, we've had a lot to deal with on the tariff space, and it's uniquely affected a lot of Tennessee businesses,” he said. “So I've had a lot of hands-on experience tackling those challenges.” And “with everything going on with tax reform, I think everybody does tax this year,” he quipped. ANNALS OF DARK MONEY: “After six weeks in office, President Trump has not disclosed the names of the donors who paid for his transition planning, despite a public pledge to do so,” The New York Times’ Ken Bensinger reports. — After bucking tradition by refusing to accept millions of dollars in federal funding for his transition — and the disclosure requirements that come along with it — “no disclosures about that financing have been made by the Trump transition, and neither it nor administration officials have given indications of a timeline for releasing that information,” leaving the public in the dark about who bankrolled the massive undertaking — and why. DEMS ASK FOR PROBE OF X PRESSURE CAMPAIGN: “Five Democratic senators have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Elon Musk is leveraging his influence in the Trump administration to bully advertisers into returning to X,” The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica reports. — “The request, from Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff and Chris Van Hollen, follows a Wall Street Journal report last month about the social-media platform’s pressuring Interpublic Group to spend more on X.” — “If Musk uses his government position to harm those who don’t do business with him, ‘he risks running afoul of criminal ethics laws,’ the senators wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi. … The senators wrote that they are concerned X is taking advantage of Musk’s powerful role to ‘extract revenue from advertisers.’” BACK IN THE GAME: OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is returning to Democratic political fundraising after helping fund Trump’s inauguration and cozying up to the new president, the Times’ Teddy Schleifer reports. — Altman is set to headline an artificial intelligence-focused fundraiser in San Francisco later this month for Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a key player on AI issues in Congress, with tickets starting at $1,000 and going up to $22,000. Altman’s co-hosts for the fundraiser include OpenAI’s chief lobbyist Chris Lehane and Franklin Square Group’s Matt Tanielian and Josh Ackil, per the NYT. — “Altman had been a longtime Democratic donor, but he had stepped away from large political giving as his profile grew, and especially so since his brief ouster as OpenAI’s chief executive in late 2023. … The event is Altman’s first known hosted political fund-raiser since the 2022 cycle. That was around the time when Mr. Altman was researching if there could be a viable Democratic primary challenge” to former President Joe Biden. FIRST IN PI — TRUMP ALUM HANGS A SHINGLE: Max Castroparedes has launched Pax American Strategies LLC, an advisory firm that specializes in providing political intelligence and strategic advice to asset managers, merchant banks, political campaigns and sovereign wealth funds. — Among his first clients are a UAE and London-based capital advisory firm, a super PAC focused on conservative digital media and a strategic intelligence firm. He served in the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration and is also an alum of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. A DOSE OF CRYPTONITE: “Crypto is firmly in its heyday in Washington, with lawsuits evaporating, a wave of industry-backed lawmakers settling into Congress and a digital asset czar reigning in the White House. Now, crypto might be its own worst enemy,” POLITICO’s Victoria Guida writes in her latest Capital Letter column. Factions within the industry are “battling with each other for strategic, commercial and ideological reasons” and potentially imperiling even the least controversial crypto legislation. SPOTTED on Wednesday at a reception hosted by Stand With Crypto to celebrate the launch of the new Crypto Caucus by Reps. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), per a tipster: Reps. Brian Steil (R-Wis.), Brian Jack (R-Ga.), Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), Herb Conaway (D-N.J.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and John Joyce (R-Pa.); Juan Suarez of Stand With Crypto, Kara Calvert and Julia Krieger of Coinbase. — And a transatlantic policy summit hosted by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Nemec+Chvatal to discuss the current dynamics of U.S.-EU relations and their effects on the private sector, per a tipster: Ruth Bajada of the EU Delegation to the U.S. and Akin’s Joe Donnelly, Kevin Brady, Brian Pomper, Geoff Verhoff and Jan Walter.
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