Trump's
Advisers Push Him to Purge Obama Appointees
Frustrated by the gush of leaks, the president's
allies say it's time to take action.
By Josh Dawsey
March 04, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Advisers to President Donald Trump are urging
him to purge the government of former President
Barack Obama's political appointees and quickly
install more people who are loyal to him, amid a
cascade of damaging stories that have put his
nascent administration in seemingly constant
crisis-control mode.
A
number of his advisers believe Obama officials
are behind the leaks and are seeking to
undermine his presidency, with just the latest
example coming from reports that Attorney
General Jeff Sessions met twice last year with
the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and
apparently misled senators about the
interactions during his confirmation hearing.
That was coupled with a New York Times story
that Obama appointees spread information about
the investigation into the Trump campaign's
contacts with Russia in an attempt to create a
paper trail about the probe. Trump's aides have
also blamed Obama appointees for other damaging
leaks, like Trump's erratic phone calls with
foreign leaders.
Inside the White House, the chatter about Obama
officials in the government has heightened in
recent weeks, one administration official said.
And advisers are saying it is time to take
action.
"His playbook should be to get rid of the Obama
appointees immediately," said Newt Gingrich, a
top surrogate. "There are an amazing number of
decisions that are being made by appointees that
are totally opposed to Trump and everything he
stands for. Who do you think those people are
responding to?"
"If you employ people who aren't loyal to you,
you can't be surprised when they leak," said
Roger Stone, another longtime adviser. A third
person close to Trump said: "He should have
gotten these people who are out to get him out a
long time ago, a long, long time ago. I think
they know that now."
The reality, however, is more complicated: The
White House has thousands of open jobs across
the agencies, many nonpolitical civilian
employees are critical of the administration,
and some Cabinet secretaries say they need the
Obama people during a rocky transition.
Only a few dozen Obama political appointees
remain in the federal government apparatus,
according to the Partnership for Public Service.
Many of them are in crucial positions, including
Robert Work, a top official at the Department of
Defense, and Thomas Shannon, the acting deputy
at the State Department.
Even if Trump were to ax those remaining senior
political appointees, he would still have to
reckon with the hundreds of thousands of
civilian employees, who stay with every
administration. Many of them are skeptical of
Trump because they resent his assault on
Washington and its culture, his impulsive
decisions and his seeming lack of intellectual
curiosity about their agencies and work.
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They have spent the past six weeks on edge. Many
are quietly on the job market, but others have
been clashing with Trump appointees, either in
the open or privately among colleagues,
according to officials across agencies. From
Homeland Security to Defense and beyond, it's
become a regular conversation among employees
about what lines they will not cross before
quitting, and how best to slow-walk orders from
above to frustrate implementation.
Amid those conversations is a running thread:
how long they'd be willing to hold out to bear
witness, and try to improve a climate they
increasingly hate, or whether to leak
information about changes they see in order to
try and stop them. "I want to be able to tell
people what's happening here," one State
Department official said.
"Nixon essentially tried to bypass the federal
bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy won and removed
him from office," said Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy,
a longtime Trump friend. "The administration
needs to be careful not to make too many
dramatic changes because the federal bureaucracy
itself is a powerful machine, and they tend to
have very establishment ideas."
Gingrich added: "Ninety-five percent of the
bureaucrats are against him."
The White House did not respond to a request for
comment.
Some in Trump's inner circle increasingly fear
that the FBI and the intelligence community are
out to damage him. But some of the damaging
leaks have also come from within his
administration, advisers say, because the West
Wing is plagued by competing factions that are
vying for Trump's attention and affection.
"You hire a bunch of people in the West Wing who
are hacks and aren't loyal to you, and you'll
have a bunch of leaks," Stone said. "There
aren't that many Trump loyalists in the White
House."
In meetings, Trump aides like Stephen Miller,
his senior policy adviser, have frequently
complained about leaks and blamed the Obama
appointees and longtime bureaucrats. Other aides
have complained about having to sit in
inter-agency meetings with Obama holdovers in
senior positions. And Trump aides have told
their people at agencies not to share plans and
documents with Obama holdovers or others who are
not sympathetic to them.
Yet across federal agencies, there are few Trump
people. Candidates for only about three dozen of
550 critical Senate-confirmed positions have
even been nominated, according to the
Partnership for Public Service.
Several advisers and people close to Trump
described the problem like this: During the
transition, aides ignored hundreds of names that
had been developed during New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie's time leading the transition. For
several weeks after he was removed, work stopped
as the team came to grips with Trump's
improbable win.
Then, little was done to pick officials beneath
the Cabinet level after Trump made a series of
wham-bam choices. Picks have frequently been
held up by the White House because they weren't
loyal to Trump during the campaign, and people
have grown increasingly skittish about being
employed in a West Wing frequently described as
chaotic and dysfunctional.
"I wish I had more of my staff on board,"
Sessions said Thursday, during a news conference
in which he announced that he would recuse
himself from any investigation related to the
presidential campaigns.
In a twist, it will be an Obama appointee, Dana
Boente, who will now be handling the
investigation into the Trump campaign and
Russian officials. Sally Yates, who was
previously the No. 2 Justice Department official
under Obama, was fired in late January after she
refused to defend his controversial travel ban.
Gingrich said he blamed Sen. Chuck Schumer for
slow-walking the nominees, though Schumer's
office notes that many of the picks were not
properly vetted: At least three have already
dropped out. The Office of Government Ethics
remains overwhelmed with applications now, "but
they are beginning to catch up," one person
involved in the nominations said. At many
agencies, no top positions are filled, which
means the layers of political appointees that
report to them haven't been picked, either.
"I didn't get it early on. This is not about
slowing down the Cabinet. This is about keeping
working control of the government for Obama,"
Gingrich said. "It's actually very shrewd on
Schumer's part. Trump is not going to have
control of the government until at least June."
Others say it could be even longer. And that a
massive purge is not the answer.
"The solution is not to purge the Obama
holdovers but rather to actually identify people
and move them forward," said Max Stier,
president of the Partnership for Public Service,
which has advised the Trump team. "Historically,
it has taken a year plus for administrations to
get their entire team in place. I'm afraid the
Trump team is behind that, and that would not be
a good thing. He has to have his own team in
place if he's going to be able to get things
done."
Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.
