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Ex-UConn quarterback Johnny McEntee returned to the White House in February as personnel director for the U.S. government. Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford<\/h5>\nIn Trump\u2019s final days, a 30-year-old aide purges officials seen as insufficiently loyal<\/h2>\n\nAuthor: Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin, John Hudson, Lisa Rein, The Washington Post<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON – Over the past week, President Donald Trump has axed his defense secretary and other top Pentagon aides, his second-in-command at the U.S. Agency for International Development, two top Homeland Security officials, a senior climate scientist and the leader of the agency that safeguards nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nEngineering much of the post-election purge is Johnny McEntee, a former college quarterback who was hustled out of the White House two years ago after a security clearance check turned up a prolific habit for online gambling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nA staunch Trump loyalist, McEntee, 30, was welcomed back into the fold in February and installed as personnel director for the entire U.S. government. Since the race was called for President-elect Joe Biden, McEntee has been distributing pink slips, warning federal workers not to cooperate with the Biden transition and threatening to oust people who show disloyalty by job hunting while Trump is still refusing to acknowledge defeat, according to six administration officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMore firings are expected, White House and agency officials said, including a top cybersecurity official whose agency on Thursday disputed Trump\u2019s unfounded claims of election fraud. While the motives are not always clear – is the White House pursuing last-minute policy goals or simply punishing disloyalty? – critics say the dismissals threaten to destabilize broad swaths of the federal bureaucracy in the fragile period during the handover to the next administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMcEntee is not just firing people. The Pentagon general counsel this week hired former Republican operative and political appointee Michael Ellis as general counsel of the National Security Agency, making him a civilian member of the senior executive service. That gives Ellis civil service protections that will make it hard for Biden\u2019s team to push him out. Several officials said McEntee also wants to help campaign allies secure jobs in the White House.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nSome officials said they worry the new hires could destroy briefing documents prepared for the incoming Biden administration. Others criticized McEntee\u2019s choices for key government roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohnny is loyal to a fault to the president, but doesn\u2019t have the basic understanding of how departments operate and what skills are required to hold certain Cabinet-level positions,\u201d said one senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. \u201cIt\u2019s actually hampered the president by putting unqualified people throughout senior roles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMcEntee declined to comment through a White House spokesman. In a statement, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said: \u201cJohn McEntee has supported the President\u2019s initiative from day one and does an outstanding job working to help make sure our administration implements the Trump agenda. He\u2019s a valuable asset to our team and no doubt the unfair criticisms being directed his way are from individuals who don\u2019t know the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nSome Trump allies applauded McEntee\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cConservatives believe that the president was not well served by the original people staffing [the White House Personnel Office]. They systematically excluded strong Trump supporters,\u201d said Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner and a prominent conservative activist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nOf McEntee, she said: \u201cI wish he had been there in the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe post-election firings are the culmination of a months-long crusade by McEntee, who reports directly to the president and sits just outside the Oval Office. Obsessed with leaks and mistrustful of veteran government officials who have served multiple administrations, Trump has complained that he finds it more difficult to deal with the federal bureaucracy than with foreign leaders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019ve fired some. I say, some, just get rid of them,\u201d Trump told donors last month in Nashville. \u201cWe have some pretty deep-seated people, and we got rid of a lot of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe president has long relied on McEntee, who worked for Trump at his organization in New York and on his presidential campaign. After the 2016 election, according to a tell-all book by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide to the first lady, McEntee happened to be delivering a turkey sandwich when Winston Wolkoff informed Trump that his inaugural committee was a \u201cs— show.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cDonald grabbed the [sandwich] bag and told the kid to sit down. \u2018You\u2019re in charge of the inauguration now,\u2019 he said.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMcEntee soon became the president\u2019s trusted personal aide, accompanying him on the golf course, watching TV off the Oval Office and carrying his large box of papers on Air Force One. Officials described him as jovial and omnipresent, but not particularly influential.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIn 2018, McEntee was ousted by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly, who discovered his gambling habit. Kelly had McEntee immediately escorted out of the West Wing, a move that enraged many Trump loyalists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cThe president values him as a very trusted, very loyal man,\u201d said Chris Ruddy, a close Trump friend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nTrump rehired McEntee in the weeks after the impeachment process, when Trump had been frustrated to see federal officials testify against him, and granted McEntee wide latitude to make personnel changes. McEntee quickly made aggressive moves, replacing longtime staff in the personnel office with a coterie of aides in their 20s and purging officials viewed as insufficiently loyal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m only here for the president,\u201d McEntee said, according to one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a private conversation. And, he said, \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to fire people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nOther senior aides say McEntee has offered to fire people they wanted gone. The moves created a toxic culture across the government, officials said, and several Cabinet members have complained to Trump about McEntee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMcEntee\u2019s office soon launched an interview process to suss out disloyalty, asking: \u201cWho on your team is good? Who on your team is bad? Who is not working to serve the president\u2019s agenda? Who brought you into the administration? What do you think of a particular policy?\u201d said one administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal questioning.<\/p>\n
People familiar with the interviews said Trump appointees wanted names of people perceived as disloyal. One Environmental Protection Agency employee was asked his opinion on pulling troops out of Afghanistan. \u201cI work at the EPA,\u201d the official said, startled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAnother official said she was asked her opinion about the president\u2019s proclamation on transgender troops. And one senior government appointee was asked by McEntee where he gets his news. (He said his answer – Fox News – seemed to meet with McEntee\u2019s satisfaction.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cThese were some really heavy-handed interviews,\u201d one administration official said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nSince the election, the pace of removals seems to have accelerated. Some of the removals appear to create opportunities for policy gains in the waning days of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nFor example, the White House on Friday abruptly removed Michael Kuperberg, the career climate scientist who has for five years overseen the National Climate Assessment, one of the most important federal documents in the battle against climate change. In his place, the White House is detailing David Legates, a meteorologist who claims that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for plants and that global warming is harmless. Legates was appointed in September to a top post at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe White House is also assigning Ryan Maue, a meteorologist who had worked for the libertarian Cato Institute and questioned whether climate change impacts would be as catastrophic as many scientists have projected, to help oversee the report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAccording to people familiar with the matter, the moves would fulfill a promise by White House officials to take steps to install like-minded staffers at NOAA and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMyron Ebell, a climate change contrarian at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who is close to the administration, called McEntee \u201ca very strong supporter of the Trump agenda, and so he moved to get Trump people into political positions. It took him a while to get to NOAA, because it\u2019s probably not at the top of their list. They\u2019re going to get the National Climate Assessment started in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n\n\u201cBetter late than never is a good way to describe it,\u201d said James Taylor, president of the conservative Heartland Institute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAt the Department of Homeland Security, McEntee\u2019s office is determined to get all disloyal employees removed in upcoming days, three people familiar with the matter said. Trump has long chafed at the agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAt the Pentagon, recently fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper mostly stayed quiet as a series of mid-level political appointees were ushered out by the White House over the past year. But other more senior officials, including Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Joe Kernan and acting undersecretary of defense for policy James Anderson, continued to stay on – until Esper was fired this week and the relative top cover that he had provided disappeared.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAnd at USAID, a top official, Bonnie Glick, was removed abruptly to make way for a Trump loyalist after she had been supportive of transition planning, including the preparation of a 440-page manual for the next administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIn some cases, the rush to oust political appointees has been confoundingly haphazard. Neil Chatterjee, who was demoted Nov. 5 from his post chairing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said in an interview Friday that it is unclear whether the White House actually took the necessary steps to remove him from his post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cHere\u2019s the crazy thing: I don\u2019t actually know that I\u2019ve been demoted,\u201d said Chatterjee, who was appointed by Trump to a five-year term on the independent commission in 2017 and remains a member of the five-person panel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe president must sign a legal designation for a new FERC chair, he said, and typically the White House makes a public announcement. Instead, he said, three officials from McEntee\u2019s office sent \u201ca one-sentence email\u201d to the commission\u2019s executive director and human resources chief saying that another Republican commissioner, James Danly, would replace Chatterjee in the top spot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cWe still have no record evidence that the designation was signed. But what\u2019s stranger is there\u2019s been no public announcement from the White House,\u201d said Chatterjee, who only learned about his ouster when Danly called him Thursday evening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIt is unclear why the White House moved to oust Chatterjee, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and a longtime supporter of fossil fuels. However, he has taken steps to allow regional power administrators to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change and pushed back against a recent White House ban on diversity training for federal employees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cNo one from the White House has actually spoken to me about this,\u201d Chatterjee said. \u201cSo I can only speculate as to why I was demoted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Author: Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin, John Hudson, Lisa Rein, The Washington Post<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON – Over the past week, President Donald Trump has axed his defense secretary and other top Pentagon aides, his second-in-command at the U.S. Agency for International Development, two top Homeland Security officials, a senior climate scientist and the leader of the agency that safeguards nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Engineering much of the post-election purge is Johnny McEntee, a former college quarterback who was hustled out of the White House two years ago after a security clearance check turned up a prolific habit for online gambling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A staunch Trump loyalist, McEntee, 30, was welcomed back into the fold in February and installed as personnel director for the entire U.S. government. Since the race was called for President-elect Joe Biden, McEntee has been distributing pink slips, warning federal workers not to cooperate with the Biden transition and threatening to oust people who show disloyalty by job hunting while Trump is still refusing to acknowledge defeat, according to six administration officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
More firings are expected, White House and agency officials said, including a top cybersecurity official whose agency on Thursday disputed Trump\u2019s unfounded claims of election fraud. While the motives are not always clear – is the White House pursuing last-minute policy goals or simply punishing disloyalty? – critics say the dismissals threaten to destabilize broad swaths of the federal bureaucracy in the fragile period during the handover to the next administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
McEntee is not just firing people. The Pentagon general counsel this week hired former Republican operative and political appointee Michael Ellis as general counsel of the National Security Agency, making him a civilian member of the senior executive service. That gives Ellis civil service protections that will make it hard for Biden\u2019s team to push him out. Several officials said McEntee also wants to help campaign allies secure jobs in the White House.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Some officials said they worry the new hires could destroy briefing documents prepared for the incoming Biden administration. Others criticized McEntee\u2019s choices for key government roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohnny is loyal to a fault to the president, but doesn\u2019t have the basic understanding of how departments operate and what skills are required to hold certain Cabinet-level positions,\u201d said one senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. \u201cIt\u2019s actually hampered the president by putting unqualified people throughout senior roles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
McEntee declined to comment through a White House spokesman. In a statement, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said: \u201cJohn McEntee has supported the President\u2019s initiative from day one and does an outstanding job working to help make sure our administration implements the Trump agenda. He\u2019s a valuable asset to our team and no doubt the unfair criticisms being directed his way are from individuals who don\u2019t know the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Some Trump allies applauded McEntee\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cConservatives believe that the president was not well served by the original people staffing [the White House Personnel Office]. They systematically excluded strong Trump supporters,\u201d said Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner and a prominent conservative activist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Of McEntee, she said: \u201cI wish he had been there in the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The post-election firings are the culmination of a months-long crusade by McEntee, who reports directly to the president and sits just outside the Oval Office. Obsessed with leaks and mistrustful of veteran government officials who have served multiple administrations, Trump has complained that he finds it more difficult to deal with the federal bureaucracy than with foreign leaders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve fired some. I say, some, just get rid of them,\u201d Trump told donors last month in Nashville. \u201cWe have some pretty deep-seated people, and we got rid of a lot of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The president has long relied on McEntee, who worked for Trump at his organization in New York and on his presidential campaign. After the 2016 election, according to a tell-all book by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide to the first lady, McEntee happened to be delivering a turkey sandwich when Winston Wolkoff informed Trump that his inaugural committee was a \u201cs— show.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cDonald grabbed the [sandwich] bag and told the kid to sit down. \u2018You\u2019re in charge of the inauguration now,\u2019 he said.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
McEntee soon became the president\u2019s trusted personal aide, accompanying him on the golf course, watching TV off the Oval Office and carrying his large box of papers on Air Force One. Officials described him as jovial and omnipresent, but not particularly influential.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In 2018, McEntee was ousted by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly, who discovered his gambling habit. Kelly had McEntee immediately escorted out of the West Wing, a move that enraged many Trump loyalists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThe president values him as a very trusted, very loyal man,\u201d said Chris Ruddy, a close Trump friend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Trump rehired McEntee in the weeks after the impeachment process, when Trump had been frustrated to see federal officials testify against him, and granted McEntee wide latitude to make personnel changes. McEntee quickly made aggressive moves, replacing longtime staff in the personnel office with a coterie of aides in their 20s and purging officials viewed as insufficiently loyal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI\u2019m only here for the president,\u201d McEntee said, according to one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a private conversation. And, he said, \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to fire people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Other senior aides say McEntee has offered to fire people they wanted gone. The moves created a toxic culture across the government, officials said, and several Cabinet members have complained to Trump about McEntee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
McEntee\u2019s office soon launched an interview process to suss out disloyalty, asking: \u201cWho on your team is good? Who on your team is bad? Who is not working to serve the president\u2019s agenda? Who brought you into the administration? What do you think of a particular policy?\u201d said one administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal questioning.<\/p>\n
People familiar with the interviews said Trump appointees wanted names of people perceived as disloyal. One Environmental Protection Agency employee was asked his opinion on pulling troops out of Afghanistan. \u201cI work at the EPA,\u201d the official said, startled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Another official said she was asked her opinion about the president\u2019s proclamation on transgender troops. And one senior government appointee was asked by McEntee where he gets his news. (He said his answer – Fox News – seemed to meet with McEntee\u2019s satisfaction.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThese were some really heavy-handed interviews,\u201d one administration official said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Since the election, the pace of removals seems to have accelerated. Some of the removals appear to create opportunities for policy gains in the waning days of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
For example, the White House on Friday abruptly removed Michael Kuperberg, the career climate scientist who has for five years overseen the National Climate Assessment, one of the most important federal documents in the battle against climate change. In his place, the White House is detailing David Legates, a meteorologist who claims that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for plants and that global warming is harmless. Legates was appointed in September to a top post at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The White House is also assigning Ryan Maue, a meteorologist who had worked for the libertarian Cato Institute and questioned whether climate change impacts would be as catastrophic as many scientists have projected, to help oversee the report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
According to people familiar with the matter, the moves would fulfill a promise by White House officials to take steps to install like-minded staffers at NOAA and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Myron Ebell, a climate change contrarian at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who is close to the administration, called McEntee \u201ca very strong supporter of the Trump agenda, and so he moved to get Trump people into political positions. It took him a while to get to NOAA, because it\u2019s probably not at the top of their list. They\u2019re going to get the National Climate Assessment started in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cBetter late than never is a good way to describe it,\u201d said James Taylor, president of the conservative Heartland Institute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At the Department of Homeland Security, McEntee\u2019s office is determined to get all disloyal employees removed in upcoming days, three people familiar with the matter said. Trump has long chafed at the agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At the Pentagon, recently fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper mostly stayed quiet as a series of mid-level political appointees were ushered out by the White House over the past year. But other more senior officials, including Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Joe Kernan and acting undersecretary of defense for policy James Anderson, continued to stay on – until Esper was fired this week and the relative top cover that he had provided disappeared.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
And at USAID, a top official, Bonnie Glick, was removed abruptly to make way for a Trump loyalist after she had been supportive of transition planning, including the preparation of a 440-page manual for the next administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In some cases, the rush to oust political appointees has been confoundingly haphazard. Neil Chatterjee, who was demoted Nov. 5 from his post chairing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said in an interview Friday that it is unclear whether the White House actually took the necessary steps to remove him from his post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the crazy thing: I don\u2019t actually know that I\u2019ve been demoted,\u201d said Chatterjee, who was appointed by Trump to a five-year term on the independent commission in 2017 and remains a member of the five-person panel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The president must sign a legal designation for a new FERC chair, he said, and typically the White House makes a public announcement. Instead, he said, three officials from McEntee\u2019s office sent \u201ca one-sentence email\u201d to the commission\u2019s executive director and human resources chief saying that another Republican commissioner, James Danly, would replace Chatterjee in the top spot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWe still have no record evidence that the designation was signed. But what\u2019s stranger is there\u2019s been no public announcement from the White House,\u201d said Chatterjee, who only learned about his ouster when Danly called him Thursday evening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It is unclear why the White House moved to oust Chatterjee, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and a longtime supporter of fossil fuels. However, he has taken steps to allow regional power administrators to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change and pushed back against a recent White House ban on diversity training for federal employees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cNo one from the White House has actually spoken to me about this,\u201d Chatterjee said. \u201cSo I can only speculate as to why I was demoted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n