Before Stephen Miller walked back into the White House in January 2025, the nonprofit he ran paid him $175,000 on top of his salary. America First Legal’s 2024 tax return lists a $75,000 bonus and a $100,000 “adjustment” covering three years of pay the board “believed was below market,” NOTUS reported. His 2024 compensation topped $567,000, up from about $266,600 in 2023. His White House salary is $195,200. On Monday he becomes chief of staff, NPR reported.
Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center told NOTUS the timing raises “questions about whether these payments were a so-called ‘golden parachute.’” America First Legal did not answer NOTUS’s questions about timing. Gene Hamilton, Miller’s deputy, got $275,000 in bonus and adjustment the same year.
Where the money came from
America First Legal does not have to name its donors. Revenue jumped from about $6 million in 2021 to $44 million in 2022, and $27 million came from a single donor, Bloomberg reported. The group’s Form 990 filings are public; the donor names are not.
What it bought
The group filed civil rights complaints aimed at corporate diversity programs, including an October 2023 letter to the EEOC targeting Major League Baseball, and a 2025 complaint against Nike that preceded a federal probe.
The stock
Miller’s 2025 financial disclosure listed $100,001 to $250,000 in Palantir stock in an account for one of his children, the Project On Government Oversight found, the largest Palantir stake of any White House staffer it reviewed. Palantir sells software to ICE, the agency Miller pushed to triple arrests. The White House said he would recuse from any conflict. The 2025 disclosure is the latest public one; NOTUS reported he sold seven figures of stock in August 2025, and what he holds now is not public.
The donors stay secret. The man they funded now runs the White House.