When former president Donald Trump paved the way for his private equity donors to skim fees from Americans’ 401(k) retirement accounts, Joe Biden’s campaign denounced the stealth executive action and promised to oppose such changes if he won the presidency. But less than two years later, Biden’s administration just quietly cemented that same policy, delivering a gift to the Democrat’s own finance industry sponsors, even as federal law enforcement officials are warning of rampant malfeasance in the private equity industry.

At issue is a Trump Labor Department ruling in 2020 that authorized retirement plan administrators to shift workers’ savings into high-risk, high-fee private equity investments, despite regulators’ long-standing interpretation that federal laws prohibited such moves.

Trump Labor Department officials touted the reinterpretation as a way to “help Americans saving for retirement gain access to alternative investments that often provide strong returns.” The letter followed Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, a Trump adviser and major donor to his super PAC, saying that accessing the $7 trillion in Americans’ 401(k) was one of his company’s top goals.

At the time, Biden’s campaign criticized the Trump move, telling the American Prospect that the Democratic nominee “staunchly opposes regulatory changes that will lead to skyrocketing fees and diminished retirement security for savers. This regulatory action is another example of President Trump putting the interests of Wall Street ahead of American workers and families.”

But rather than rescinding Trump’s ruling, Biden’s own Labor Department appears to have cemented the Trump directive in a new supplemental letter being hailed by finance industry lawyers.

Though the new letter does include warnings about the risks of private equity, it avoids rescinding the Trump initiative. On the contrary, it explicitly affirms that retirement administrators with “experience evaluating private equity investments . . . may be suited to analyze these investments for a (401k) plan, particularly with the assistance of a qualified fiduciary investment adviser.”

“Biden’s Department of Labor could have and should have made a stronger statement about the unsuitability of private equity products for workers’ defined contribution retirement savings and the inability of nearly all brokers to evaluate private equity products,” said the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Eileen Appelbaum, who coauthored the book Private Equity At Work.

Last week, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court handed down a ruling empowering 401(k) holders to sue finance executives that invest their savings in inappropriately risky or predatory private equity investments.

However, Biden’s Labor Department has effectively blessed such investment strategies. Indeed, industry lawyers and investment executives are already celebrating the letter as a precedent setting ruling potentially opening trillions of dollars of Americans’ retirement savings up to higher-fee investments.

“We believe this is a settled matter now,” said a finance executive at Partners Group, the Switzerland-based investment firm that spearheaded the lobbying push for the letter, according to Bloomberg Law.

Appelbaum, however, said that especially with the recent court ruling, the threat of retiree lawsuits could still deter retirement plan administrators from moving quickly into higher risk, higher fee investments.

“Much as private equity firms may wish it were different, they have been mostly unable to worm their way into workers’ 401(k)s and abscond with their retirement savings,” she told Jacobin.