# Checkmate Government Relations The breakout newcomer of the Trump-world lobbying cluster — a firm that went from a rounding error to eight figures of revenue in a single year on the strength of its administration ties. ## Scale Checkmate grew from about **$70,000 in 2024 to roughly $22 million in 2025**, hiring some 90 clients in what was effectively its debut year with a full Washington presence. It is the fourth of the four close-to-Trump firms (with [[Ballard Partners]], [[Miller Strategies]], and [[Continental Strategy]]) that posted historic 2025 growth. ## Trump-world ties Managing partner [[Ches McDowell]] — brother of Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) — is repeatedly described as close to the Trump administration. The firm's bench includes Christopher LaCivita Jr., son of top Trump campaign adviser [[Chris LaCivita]], and James Johnson, a former Trump-administration Treasury and White House policy adviser. Checkmate's largest Q3 2025 client was the crypto exchange Binance, paying for "financial services policy" and "executive relief" work around the period when founder Changpeng Zhao received a Trump pardon — a transaction that ties the firm to the KB's [[Trump Crypto Ventures]] thread. ## FARA FARA registrant **#7534** (registered February 2025 from Winston-Salem, NC; verified against the DOJ eFile API 2026-07-07). **No active foreign principals yet** — the registration is a shelf waiting for its first sovereign client, which is itself a signal: the firm built the compliance infrastructure for foreign work in its first month of DC scale-up. Mapped in the [[FARA Registrant Map]]. ## See also [[Lobbying Hub]] · [[Ches McDowell]] · [[FARA Registrant Map]] · [[Revolving Door]] · [[Lobbying]]