Stephen Miller, top Trump aide, discloses Palantir stake

Stephen Miller, the influential Trump adviser at the heart of the administration’s aggressive deportation effort, has family shareholdings in ICE contractor Palantir Technologies, according to new financial disclosures spotlighted by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit focusing on corruption and ethics in the federal government.

The stake in the company — which the disclosure says is between $100,000 and $250,000 — was not previously reported, POGO says.

The stock is technically held in the account of one of Miller’s young children, though “that does not legally matter, according to the Office of Government Ethics, which says ‘an asset that is owned by a spouse or minor child is analyzed under 18 U.S.C. § 208 [the criminal conflict of interest law] as if the employee owns it,’” the nonprofit reported.

The Miller disclosure is another example of the myriad financial, professional, and personal linkages that Palantir has with the administration.

The company’s largest individual shareholder is venture capitalist, Republican megadonor, and right-wing ideologue Peter Thiel, whose stake in the company he cofounded is worth nearly $10 billion. Thiel has been a long-standing ally of Vice President JD Vance, who was Thiel’s employee at a venture capital fund. Thiel later helped back Vance’s own VC fund and spent $15 million to help Vance win a US Senate seat representing Ohio in 2022.

The POGO report highlights other connections between the administration and the company:

“While the federal government’s chief information officer and former Palantir employee Gregory Barbaccia and at least 10 other Trump White House staffers have owned stock in Palantir, according to disclosures analyzed by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), Miller’s disclosure shows he has a larger stake in the company than the rest.

Barbaccia and nine of the others have owned between $1,001 and $15,000 of Palantir stock each, amounts low enough they cannot pose a criminal conflict of interest due to a legal exemption. The tenth, Kara Frederick, is a senior policy advisor to Miller who owns between $50,001 and $100,000 of Palantir stock.

For Don Fox, a former acting head and former general counsel of the Office of Government Ethics, the nature of Miller’s work and his investments in Palantir could pose a conflict of interest.

‘He could easily become involved in policy matters that have a direct and predictable impact on Palantir,’ Fox said.”

Palantir shares have soared this year. It’s currently on track to be the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 for the second year in a row, thanks to several favorable thematic tailwinds.

The company has exposure to the AI technology frenzy through its AIP software for corporate clients. It’s a defense tech stock with a lot of business in a destabilized Middle East, where spending on tech weaponry will undoubtably grow. And it’s seen by some as a drone stock — a hot spot for investors as a result of the centrality of drones in the Russia-Ukraine war — as a result of the software it sells for unmanned aircraft.

But arguably, more than anything else, it’s a Trump trade, one of a coterie of companies whose share prices exploded after the 2024 US presidential election.

In fact, it’s the best-performing Trump trade by far, as traders have wagered that some combination of either alignment with administration policy shifts or cozy connections with the administration would benefit the company.

Despite Palantir’s exposure to other hot parts of the software business, the US government remains its single largest customer. The New York Times recently reported on the growing scope of the company’s business with the US government, and we, likewise, noted the massive expansion of a contract with the Department of Defense. The nonprofit report published Tuesday also wrote that this month, ICE announced it planned to award Palantir a contract without going through a competitive bidding process.

“ICE has conducted extensive market research that suggests there are no vendors other than Palantir capable of performing the necessary work to meet ICE mission needs,” the agency said.