GoKawiilLast year, the Department of Defense announced it was taking a $400 million stake in critical minerals company MP Materials, and loaning the company an extra $150 million to expand operations at its mining site in Mountain Pass, California, the only rare earth location in the U.S. The historic deal was the first of several direct equity investments and loans the Pentagon has aggressively doled out to battery storage and mining companies in the second Trump administration, which now total more than $2 billion and have ramped up in recent months, as part of the military’s effort to break Chinese dominance of critical minerals supply chains.
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At the center of the July 2025 MP Materials deal was a top private equity lawyer named Alan Waldenberg, then head of the tax group at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, which later that summer merged with another white-shoe firm to form McDermott Will & Schulte, where Waldenberg remains a partner. Over the last three decades, his top client has been Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity giant whose founder, Stephen Feinberg, is now the number two civilian official at the Department of Defense.
Since Feinberg assumed his Senate-confirmed post at the Pentagon, where he has vast sway over budgets, contracts, and strategy, Waldenberg has found himself in a new role: managing Feinberg’s irrevocable trust, which holds his Cerberus assets and is set up to benefit his adult children. As of 2024, the last year of published filings, Waldenberg also served as president of Feinberg’s charitable foundation.
An aerial view of MP Materials’ Mountain Pass rare earth mine and processing facility in California, photographed in 2024. Credit: Courtesy MP Materials
At the same time, Waldenberg confirmed to the Prospect that he represented the Department of Defense in the MP Materials deal, in addition to his roles providing outside legal counsel to Cerberus and to Feinberg. Waldenberg said that Feinberg had chosen him to represent the DOD in the deal because he has a “high degree of trust” in him, based on decades working together, and that his involvement had been “completely discussed” with the department’s ethics staff. Asked about the potential for conflicts of interest to arise due to his simultaneous role as attorney for Cerberus, Feinberg, and the DOD, he said “you’ve got to be kidding me” and insisted that the interests of the three clients have been kept separate.
Waldenberg’s role in providing counsel to Cerberus and managing aspects of Feinberg’s personal affairs and finances while being involved in the DOD’s historic critical minerals deal has not been previously reported. It’s unclear whether or to what extent he has been involved in other DOD direct equity deals and activities.
Based on public filings, Cerberus has no known direct connection to MP Materials, though the private equity firm has made investing in the rare earth supply chain a priority in recent years. In particular, the firm has backed Canadian mining outfit Torngat Metals, which operates a site in Quebec, and Eos Energy Enterprises, which manufactures battery storage units.
Cerberus and MP Materials did not respond to requests for comment.
“If he has a personal relationship with Feinberg, Feinberg shouldn’t be making a decision about whether he’s hired by DOD,” said Richard Painter, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush and went on to lead the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “I don’t think [Feinberg] should be making a recommendation or a decision, he should be out of it. I can’t go into the government and recommend that the government retain my personal lawyer for something while he’s still my personal lawyer. I just can’t do that.”
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