Caroline Ciccone

Overview

Caroline Ciccone is the president of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog nonprofit that describes itself as using investigative research and high-impact communications to expose corruption and hold officials and corporate special interests accountable (Accountable.US). She took the job in 2023 after two years in the Biden-Harris administration, where she was a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services and Communications Director at the Office of Personnel Management (Accountable.US; InfluenceWatch).

Ciccone’s profile is unusual among nonprofit leaders: her public record is thin on profiles but thick on formal regulatory filings. On June 13, 2024, she signed the complaint asking the IRS to investigate the Epoch Public Foundation and The Epoch Times Association for potentially false Form 990 filings; in 2025 she was the sole public commenter urging the SEC to reject the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF (Accountable.US; The Block).

Two decades in strategic communications

Before she ran a watchdog group, Ciccone spent nearly two decades as a strategic communications specialist moving between Democratic politics, government, and consulting, according to her official biography (Accountable.US). She started on the Democratic National Committee, where she worked as a communications specialist and then Deputy Communications Director from 2007 to 2013, including time in the press office of former Senator Barbara Boxer of California (InfluenceWatch; Accountable.US). In 2011 she announced the DNC would reimburse donors after the party broke its own policy by accepting donations from federal lobbyists (InfluenceWatch).

The Obama administration brought her into government as a Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Communications and Public Liaison at the Small Business Administration (InfluenceWatch). From 2014 to 2017 she led Americans United for Change as executive director, an issue-advocacy organization where, per her own bio, she collaborated with partner organizations to advance policies like raising the minimum wage and immigration reform (InfluenceWatch; Accountable.US). She then spent 2017–2018 as a Managing Principal at Precision Strategies, the strategic consulting firm, before taking the helm of Restore Public Trust, a New Venture Fund project conducting opposition research against the first Trump administration and Republican members of Congress (InfluenceWatch).

Those Trust years produced her sharpest-edged public campaigns. In a 2018 statement she said Americans were “deeply concerned about the level of corruption they see in the Trump Administration” and pledged laser-focus on exposing it (InfluenceWatch). In January 2019 she attacked Attorney General nominee William Barr over his Trump–Russia skepticism and corporate ties, and she organized JobLossRoss.com, a site criticizing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross after his remarks about furloughed federal workers during the January 2019 shutdown, calling his comments “disqualifying” (InfluenceWatch). Originally from Massachusetts, she holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Stanford University (Accountable.US).

The filing-cabinet strategy

Ciccone’s presidency has a throughline: formal regulatory and congressional channels — not just press releases — used as accountability tools. On June 13, 2024, she signed a complaint to Robert Malone, Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, asking the agency to open an investigation into the Epoch Public Foundation (EIN 68-0650661) and The Epoch Times Association, Inc. (EIN 22-3848589) for “including potentially false or fraudulent information” on their Forms 990 for tax years 2020 and 2021, and to impose the maximum monetary penalty if the filings proved incomplete or inaccurate (Accountable.US).

The filing argued both are 501(c)(3) public charities led by Zhong Tang — president of the foundation and CEO of the association — and documented apparent gaps: a $4,678,292 cash grant from the association to the foundation in fiscal year 2021 that the foundation never reported as related-organization revenue, a similar $11,062,919 grant in fiscal year 2022, missing Schedule B filings, and $20,586,627 in liabilities to related organizations including New Tang Dynasty (Accountable.US). It also noted the period overlapped the alleged money-laundering scheme of Weidong “Bill” Guan, the foundation’s treasurer and director and the association’s CFO, who was indicted in the Southern District of New York in May 2024 (Accountable.US).

She repeated the playbook with financial regulators. When Trump Media & Technology Group proposed a Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF, Accountable.US filed what the specialist press reported was the proposal’s only public comment — Ciccone’s, urging denial: “If the SEC votes to approve the launch, it will put doubts into the minds of Americans and potentially undermine confidence in the markets and the agency itself” (The Block). One public comment was all it took for the organization’s objection to become the angle the industry press led with — a measure of how a single, well-placed filing can drive coverage (The Block). In May 2025 she extended the same campaign to Congress, submitting a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Committee minority roundtable on crypto corruption that catalogued Trump’s crypto ventures — the $TRUMP memecoin, World Liberty Financial, the $2 billion MGX/Binance deal — and asked Congress to investigate and legislate against “pay-to-play” presidential self-enrichment (Accountable.US).

Filing	Target	Year	What it asked for
IRS complaint, signed by Ciccone as president	Epoch Public Foundation and The Epoch Times Association	2024	IRS investigation into potentially false Form 990 filings, plus the maximum monetary penalty (Accountable.US)
SEC public comment	Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF (Trump Media & Technology Group)	2025	Denial of the proposed rule change over conflicts of interest (The Block)
Statement for the record	House Financial Services Committee minority roundtable on crypto corruption	2025	Congressional investigation and legislation barring “pay-to-play” enrichment by presidents and officials (Accountable.US)

Presidency of Accountable.US

Ciccone took over as president of Accountable.US in 2023, succeeding Kyle Herrig — the group’s president since its 2019 founding — who remained as a senior advisor (InfluenceWatch). Her return followed two years in the Biden-Harris administration: as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (Health Care) at the Department of Health and Human Services, she developed messaging for health care priorities including the Inflation Reduction Act’s health provisions and policies on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and reproductive health care, and as Communications Director at the Office of Personnel Management she supported the 2.1-million-member federal workforce (Accountable.US). She remains in the post as of the latest independent reporting read for this profile, which quoted her as president in August 2025 (The Block).

Frequently asked questions

Who is Caroline Ciccone? Caroline Ciccone is the president of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog nonprofit focused on corruption and special-interest accountability (Accountable.US). A Massachusetts native with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University, she is a strategic communications veteran of Democratic politics, the Obama and Biden-Harris administrations, and the consulting firm Precision Strategies (Accountable.US).

What was the 2024 IRS complaint against the Epoch organizations? On June 13, 2024, Ciccone signed a complaint to the IRS Exempt Organizations Division asking it to investigate the Epoch Public Foundation and The Epoch Times Association for potentially false or fraudulent Form 990 information returns, citing unreported grants and missing Schedule B and Schedule R disclosures (Accountable.US). No public record of an IRS response was found.

What is Accountable.US? Accountable.US describes itself as a nonpartisan, progressive organization using investigative research and high-impact communications to expose corruption and hold government officials and corporate special interests accountable (Accountable.US). Founded in 2019 under president Kyle Herrig, it absorbed projects including Restore Public Trust and the Western Values Project; Ciccone succeeded Herrig as president in 2023 (InfluenceWatch).

What did Ciccone do before leading Accountable.US? She was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (Health Care) at the Department of Health and Human Services and Communications Director at the Office of Personnel Management (Accountable.US). Earlier she was Managing Principal at Precision Strategies, Executive Director of Americans United for Change, an Obama-era Small Business Administration communications official, and Deputy Communications Director at the DNC (Accountable.US; InfluenceWatch).

Is Caroline Ciccone the same person as Christine Ciccone? No. Christine Ciccone was an assistant Homeland Security Secretary in the Trump administration who was the subject of a 2019 State Department inspector-general dispute — a different person, with a different first name and a Republican-administration role (Government Executive). Caroline Ciccone is the Democratic-leaning communications professional and Accountable.US president profiled here.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not claim to know the IRS’s response to the June 2024 complaint; no public record of one was found.
• It does not state the exact month she became president in 2023, because the sources read give only the year.
• It does not name the subjects of her Stanford bachelor’s and master’s degrees; no source read stated them.
• It does not repeat InfluenceWatch’s editorial characterizations (e.g. “agitation group,” “dark money”) of the organizations she led — only its dates, titles, and quoted statements were used.
• It does not assert that she still holds the presidency beyond the latest dated evidence read (August 2025 independent reporting; her official bio still lists her as president).
• The complaint document itself references tax years 2020 and 2021 in its request letter while analyzing fiscal years 2021 and 2022 in its factual background; this discrepancy is the document’s own and this profile does not resolve it.