Nicolai Haugsted
Investigation exposes suspicious campaign behind apparent support for Trump plan.
Donald Trump’s push to reshape how Americans can invest their retirement savings is facing scrutiny after an investigation identified thousands of apparently manufactured public comments supporting the policy.
According to The Daily Beast, more than 12,000 submissions sent to the Department of Labor appear to have been generated through a coordinated campaign designed to create the impression of widespread grassroots backing, according to Bloomberg.
Several people whose names appeared beneath supportive comments told the outlet they had never submitted them. Records indicated that others supposedly endorsing the proposal had already died.
Trump has made expanding access to alternative investments such as private equity and cryptocurrency through retirement accounts a priority of his second administration.
Public comments submitted as part of the regulatory process appeared, at first glance, to provide substantial support.
Bloomberg’s examination, however, identified unusual similarities among more than 12,000 favorable submissions. Five templates accounted for all of the comments in question, with wording, punctuation, line breaks and length reportedly matching almost exactly within each group.
Names provided with the submissions represented one of the few significant differences.
Nearly identical numbers of supportive comments arrived each day between April 29 and May 5 before the pattern abruptly ended. Personal information commonly found in public submissions was also largely absent.
By comparison, almost all of roughly 30,000 comments opposing the proposal included information such as an email address, city or state.
Dead woman’s name appears on submission
Questions surrounding the comments became more serious when Bloomberg contacted relatives of people supposedly responsible for them.
Danna Oderman’s name appeared on a May submission praising the prospect of allowing 401(k) investors greater access to private markets.
Oderman had died the previous December.
“That’s not my mom,” her son, Heath Oderman, told Bloomberg after learning about the submission.
The comment attributed to his mother claimed that broadening access to private markets would provide additional capital for American businesses and boost the economy.
“The language is nothing she would ever have used while on this Earth,” Heath said.
Bloomberg reported that a nationwide examination of public records found no evidence of another person sharing Danna Oderman’s name.
Lyngrid Rawlings, a former educator and U.S. Foreign Service officer, was similarly listed as supporting the policy in May.
Rawlings died in 2024, according to her daughter Lauren.
“It’s deeply disrespectful and dishonoring,” Lauren Rawlings told Bloomberg. “Her life was about service, and to have her name misused in this way is the antithesis of everything she lived for.”
Evidence of questionable submissions was not limited to deceased individuals.
Karl Giberson, a retired Massachusetts professor and published author, discovered that his name had also been attached to a comment backing the proposal.
“Those don’t reflect my sentiments, at all,” Giberson said.
Billions in retirement savings at stake
Trump’s proposal could provide private equity companies and other financial businesses with greater access to the enormous American retirement market.
Approximately $10 trillion is held in workers’ 401(k) accounts, making any expansion into private equity and other alternative assets potentially lucrative for investment managers.
Private equity firms have strongly advocated for greater access to those funds.
One recurring public-comment template reportedly thanked Trump directly, while another presented its supposed author as a retiree supporting efforts to modernize the 401(k) system. Other submissions promoted the idea of “democratizing” access to private markets.
No evidence presented in the reporting establishes who created or submitted the questionable comments.
The findings nevertheless leave a significant discrepancy between the apparent volume of public support and the identities attached to some of those submissions.
Neither the White House nor the Department of Labor had immediately responded to requests for comment. The General Services Administration, which operates the federal website used to submit public comments on proposed government actions, was also contacted for a response.
