Senate Aide Lobbying Scandal

The story so far

As of September 7, 2026

A senior aide to Sen. Mike Rounds, Robert Skjonsberg, has been working both as a Senate staffer and as a paid lobbyist in South Dakota for companies that regularly face decisions in Congress. The disclosure ties a current federal insider to more than a dozen outside clients while he has continued advising a senator who is active on issues those clients care about. The conflict worry is not abstract; it is about whether private interests gained proximity to federal policymaking through a staffer on the public payroll.

The specifics make the overlap concrete. Skjonsberg ran Rounds’ 2014 Senate campaign, was chief of staff from 2015 to 2022, and then became a senior advisor. He registered as a South Dakota lobbyist in 2023. His government‑affairs shop, 605 Strategies, lists him as co‑owner and founding member, yet it does not appear in his lobbying paperwork. His client list has included Meta, Altria, the Freedom Foundation, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, and state dairy and pork producer groups.

What ties the facts together is the alignment between his clients’ interests and the senator’s work. After Skjonsberg registered to represent Meta last year, Rounds introduced several bills on artificial intelligence, including one to create a commission to study how AI affects jobs. Rounds sits on the Senate panel that funds agriculture programs and has pushed measures touching livestock grazing and limits on foreign ownership of U.S. farmland, while Skjonsberg has lobbied for farm groups and an equipment manufacturers’ association. The issue on the table now is whether any wall between his Senate role and his lobbying actually existed, and whether disclosure and recusal rules were enough to protect the public interest.

Where it stands: the dual role has been exposed, at least two clients say their contracts with him ended in March when the state legislative session closed, and his state lobbying began in 2023. The unanswered questions drive the story now: whether his outside work was properly disclosed to the Senate, whether he avoided federal matters tied to his clients, and why his firm is absent from state filings. The stakes are the integrity of staff conduct standards and whether companies effectively bought access to federal insight through a sitting Senate advisor.