Top Pentagon Official Contracted Personal Lawyer to Handle Minerals Deal
Top Pentagon Official Contracted Personal Lawyer to Handle Minerals Deal
五角大楼高官聘请私人律师处理矿产交易
Last year, the Department of Defense announced it was taking a $400 million stake in critical minerals company MP Materials, and loaning the company an extra $150 million to expand operations at its mining site in Mountain Pass, California, the only rare earth location in the U.S. The historic deal was the first of several direct equity investments and loans the Pentagon has aggressively doled out to battery storage and mining companies in the second Trump administration, which now total more than $2 billion and have ramped up in recent months, as part of the military’s effort to break Chinese dominance of critical minerals supply chains.
去年，美国国防部宣布斥资 4 亿美元入股关键矿产公司 MP Materials，并向该公司额外提供 1.5 亿美元贷款，用于扩大其位于加利福尼亚州芒廷帕斯（Mountain Pass）矿区的运营——这是美国境内唯一的稀土产地。这笔历史性的交易是特朗普第二任期内五角大楼积极向电池储能和矿业公司发放的多项直接股权投资和贷款中的首例。作为军方打破中国在关键矿产供应链中主导地位努力的一部分，这些投资总额现已超过 20 亿美元，且在近几个月内大幅增加。
At the center of the July 2025 MP Materials deal was a top private equity lawyer named Alan Waldenberg, then head of the tax group at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, which later that summer merged with another white-shoe firm to form McDermott Will & Schulte, where Waldenberg remains a partner. Over the last three decades, his top client has been Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity giant whose founder, Stephen Feinberg, is now the number two civilian official at the Department of Defense.
2025 年 7 月 MP Materials 交易的核心人物是一位名叫艾伦·沃尔登伯格（Alan Waldenberg）的顶级私募股权律师。当时他担任 Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP 律师事务所税务组负责人，该所后来在那个夏天与另一家顶级律所合并，成立了 McDermott Will & Schulte，沃尔登伯格目前仍是该所合伙人。在过去三十年里，他的主要客户一直是私募股权巨头博龙资本（Cerberus Capital Management），其创始人斯蒂芬·范伯格（Stephen Feinberg）目前担任美国国防部二号文职官员。
Since Feinberg assumed his Senate-confirmed post at the Pentagon, where he has vast sway over budgets, contracts, and strategy, Waldenberg has found himself in a new role: managing Feinberg’s irrevocable trust, which holds his Cerberus assets and is set up to benefit his adult children. As of 2024, the last year of published filings, Waldenberg also served as president of Feinberg’s charitable foundation.
自范伯格就任经参议院确认的五角大楼职位以来，他在预算、合同和战略方面拥有巨大影响力，而沃尔登伯格也担任了一个新角色：管理范伯格的不可撤销信托。该信托持有其博龙资本的资产，并旨在造福其成年子女。截至 2024 年（已公布文件的最后一年），沃尔登伯格还担任范伯格慈善基金会的主席。
At the same time, Waldenberg confirmed to the Prospect that he represented the Department of Defense in the MP Materials deal, in addition to his roles providing outside legal counsel to Cerberus and to Feinberg. Waldenberg said that Feinberg had chosen him to represent the DOD in the deal because he has a “high degree of trust” in him, based on decades working together, and that his involvement had been “completely discussed” with the department’s ethics staff.
与此同时，沃尔登伯格向《美国展望》（The Prospect）证实，除了担任博龙资本和范伯格的外部法律顾问外，他还在 MP Materials 交易中代表国防部。沃尔登伯格表示，范伯格之所以选择他代表国防部处理这笔交易，是因为基于几十年的合作，范伯格对他有“高度信任”，并且他的参与已与国防部的道德审查人员进行了“充分讨论”。
Asked about the potential for conflicts of interest to arise due to his simultaneous role as attorney for Cerberus, Feinberg, and the DOD, he said “you’ve got to be kidding me” and insisted that the interests of the three clients have been kept separate. Waldenberg’s role in providing counsel to Cerberus and managing aspects of Feinberg’s personal affairs and finances while being involved in the DOD’s historic critical minerals deal has not been previously reported.
当被问及因同时担任博龙资本、范伯格和国防部的律师而可能产生的利益冲突时，他回应称“你一定是在开玩笑”，并坚称这三个客户的利益已保持独立。此前媒体并未报道过沃尔登伯格在参与国防部历史性关键矿产交易的同时，还为博龙资本提供咨询并管理范伯格个人事务和财务的情况。
“If he has a personal relationship with Feinberg, Feinberg shouldn’t be making a decision about whether he’s hired by DOD,” said Richard Painter, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush and went on to lead the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “I don’t think [Feinberg] should be making a recommendation or a decision, he should be out of it. I can’t go into the government and recommend that the government retain my personal lawyer for something while he’s still my personal lawyer. I just can’t do that.”
“如果他与范伯格有私人关系，范伯格就不应该决定是否聘用他为国防部工作，”曾在乔治·W·布什政府担任白宫首席道德律师、后领导监督组织“华盛顿公民责任与道德”（CREW）的理查德·潘特（Richard Painter）表示。“我不认为（范伯格）应该做出推荐或决定，他应该回避。我不能进入政府并建议政府聘请我的私人律师处理某事，而他同时还是我的私人律师。我根本不能这样做。”
In a statement to the Prospect, the Department of Defense wrote that the arrangement was aboveboard. “OSC [DOD’s Office of Strategic Capital, which leads the Pentagon’s rare earths investments] maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes a detailed screening process and operates in full compliance with all federal ethics laws and regulations,” the statement said.
国防部在给《美国展望》的一份声明中写道，这一安排是公开透明的。“战略资本办公室（OSC，负责五角大楼稀土投资的部门）维护着一套严谨的多层级道德框架，其中包括详细的筛选流程，并完全遵守所有联邦道德法律和法规，”声明称。