Buttigieg asks consulting firm to release his past client list

White House hopeful Pete Buttigieg called on McKinsey & Co., the consulting firm where he worked for three years, to release his list of clients as he faces an avalanche of scrutiny over his work for the company.

“It’s something they can do,” the South Bend, Ind., mayor said Friday on New Hampshire Public Radio, referring to McKinsey, where he worked from 2007 to 2010.

“But right now, I am calling on McKinsey to release that information. Maybe they’re not used to doing that, but they’re not used to having somebody who used to work there being seriously considered for the American presidency,” he added. “This information should come out and I’m happy to speak to it when it does.”

Buttigieg has said he cannot release the list of clients himself because of a nondisclosure agreement he signed with the company, but his campaign confirmed to The Hill that it has asked the firm to release him from the arrangement.

“We will continue to ask and are eager to share more about his work soon,” the campaign said Thursday.

Buttigieg’s ties to McKinsey have been thrust into the spotlight in the 2020 presidential primary race after reports surfaced of the firm’s work for controversial clients.

One of those clients includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a top target for Democrats over its role in the Trump administration’s now-scrapped “zero tolerance” immigration policy which increased family separations at the border.

The New York Times’s editorial board published an op-ed Thursday saying Buttigieg still owes voters “a more complete account of his time at the company.”

“In Mr. Buttigieg’s case, the most straightforward solution is for McKinsey to release him from his vows of silence — or at least to substitute a significantly more permissive agreement,” the board wrote. “The obligation to provide more information, however, ultimately falls on Mr. Buttigieg. He must find a way to give voters a more complete accounting of his time at the company.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of Buttigieg’s top rivals in the crowded 2020 primary field, also said the South Bend, Ind., mayor should make public his list of clients, telling reporters Thursday, “I think the voters want to know about possible conflicts of interest.” 

While Buttigieg told NBC News that he had no regrets about his time at McKinsey, he said on New Hampshire Public Radio on Friday that the reports of McKinsey’s dealings with ICE were “disgusting” and a sign of the “amoral turn of mind that increasingly dominates corporate America.”