# Reince Priebus Chairman of the [[Republican National Committee]] from 2011 to 2017 and Trump's first White House chief of staff (January 20 – July 31, 2017). Since then he has worked as a revolving-door operator. He is President of the Michael Best & Friedrich law firm and chairman of its lobbying arm, [[Michael Best Strategies]]. He has been a Fox News political analyst since January 2026, and he holds appointments on the President's intelligence advisory and oversight boards. ## The party chairman Priebus came up through the Wisconsin GOP, which he chaired from 2007 to 2011, and ran the RNC for six years. Three episodes from those years sit in the vault: - **The autopsy.** After Romney's 2012 loss, the RNC's [[RNC Autopsy]] (formally the Growth and Opportunity Project) told the party to broaden its appeal, including by supporting immigration reform. Trump won the 2016 nomination by doing the opposite. Priebus's own party diagnosis was overturned by the candidate he then served. - **The data war.** The RNC fought the Koch-funded [[i360]] over who would control the party's voter file. Priebus and his chief of staff, Katie Walsh, argued that relying on i360 handed a small group of billionaires control of the party's most valuable asset ([[Koch Network]]). - **The 2016 convention.** The RNC he ran put down the delegate rebellion and backed the primary winner ([[Trump 2016 Nomination]]). ## Chief of staff He lasted just over six months, the shortest tenure of any non-acting White House chief of staff. He was squeezed between [[Steve Bannon]]'s faction and the family, publicly attacked by incoming communications director [[Anthony Scaramucci]], and replaced by [[John Kelly]], who was himself followed by [[Mick Mulvaney]] and [[Mark Meadows]] ([[Trump 1.0 Cabinet Hub]]). He was later a witness in the [[Robert Mueller]] investigation. ## The revolving door This page matters to the vault because of what came after. Priebus went back to Michael Best, a Wisconsin law firm, and built its government-affairs arm into a Trump-era lobbying shop. By 2025 [[Michael Best Strategies]] ranked about **#32 in federal lobbying, at about $16.05 million** ([[Lobbying Hub]]). It is a clean example of the [[Revolving Door Roster]] pattern: a former RNC chair and chief of staff selling access to an administration whose personnel office he knows, while also serving on the President's intelligence advisory board and commenting on Fox. In March 2024 [[Michael Whatley]] and [[Lara Trump]] cleared out the RNC's remaining Priebus-era holdovers. That removed him from the party machinery, but not from the access business. ## See also - [[Michael Best Strategies]] · [[Revolving Door Roster]] · [[Lobbying Hub]] - [[Republican National Committee]] · [[Michael Whatley]] · [[i360]] · [[Trump 2016 Nomination]] - [[John Kelly]] · [[Trump 1.0 Cabinet Hub]] · [[Fox News]]