Sen. Mike Rounds' longtime right-hand man has spent years working as a registered lobbyist for Meta, tobacco giant Altria and more than a dozen other outside clients while simultaneously drawing a paycheck as the South Dakota Republican's senior Senate adviser, according to a Politico investigation reported Monday — a dual role ethics watchdogs call one of the starkest conflicts of interest they have seen on Capitol Hill.

Robert Skjonsberg has been at Rounds' side for more than a decade. He ran Rounds' first Senate campaign in 2014, served as chief of staff from 2015 to 2022, and now holds the title of senior adviser. Since registering as a South Dakota state lobbyist in 2023, he has represented Meta, Altria, the conservative Freedom Foundation, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and both the South Dakota Dairy Producers and Pork Producers, according to state filings cited in the report. His own government-affairs firm, 605 Strategies — which lists him on its website as "co-owner" and "founding member" — does not appear anywhere in his official lobbying paperwork.

AI bills followed the Meta contract

The timing has drawn particular scrutiny. Rounds has introduced several artificial-intelligence bills, including legislation to create a federal commission studying AI's impact on the workforce, in the period since Skjonsberg began lobbying on Meta's behalf. Rounds also sits on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture and has pushed measures — including one opening new grazing land for cattle producers and another restricting foreign-adversary-linked purchases of U.S. farmland — that touch directly on interests represented by the dairy, pork and equipment-manufacturer groups Skjonsberg lobbies for in Pierre.

"It poses the most obvious conflict of interest I can imagine. Serving a public official, you're supposed to be working on the public's behalf, but then simultaneously working as a hired lobbyist, you're now working also on some private special interest's behalf and getting directly paid for it," said Craig Holman, a government-ethics lobbyist at Public Citizen.

Meredith McGehee, a longtime congressional ethics expert with Issue One, went further, telling reporters the arrangement should not be allowed at all. "It's wholly inappropriate for somebody who's working as a Senate staffer to be lobbying, even if it's only at the state level, because you can't draw this line or wall between all the kinds of information you gain," McGehee said. "To me, this is pretty much a no-go, and it's an outside employment that should not be permitted."

The revelation lands squarely in the middle of a competitive re-election fight. Rounds, who cruised past a token primary challenge in June, faces independent candidate Brian Bengs in the November 3 general election. Bengs seized on the report, saying Rounds "has taken over $215,000 from AI data center interests" plus additional money from super PACs aligned with Big Tech, and pointed to Skjonsberg's Meta contract as evidence the senator's inner circle is financially entangled with the industries his committees oversee.

Senate rules bar many staffers from outside work that amounts to paid lobbying, and the Daily Caller's own review of the arrangement found no evidence Skjonsberg had disclosed the 605 Strategies ownership stake in his federal filings. Rounds' office did not respond to requests for comment included in any of the published reports. With the general election two months away, the disclosure adds a fresh line of attack for Bengs and could draw scrutiny from the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, which has authority to review staff conflict-of-interest complaints.